The Man in the Iron Mask

The Man in the Iron Mask is the name given to an unidentified prisoner who was arrested in 1669 or 1670 and subsequently held in a number of French prisons, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol (modern Pinerolo, Italy). Recent research suggests that his name might have been "Eustache Dauger," but this still has not been completely proven. He was held in the custody of the same jailer, Benigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, for a period of 34 years. He died on 19 November 1703 under the name "Marchioly," during the reign of Louis XIV of France (1643-1715). Since no one ever saw his face because it was hidden by a mask of black velvet cloth, the true identity of the prisoner remains a mystery even today; it has been extensively debated by historians, and various theories have been expounded in numerous books and films. Writer and philosopher Voltaire claimed in the second edition of his Questions sur l'Encyclopedie (published in 1771) that the prisoner wore a mask made of iron rather than of cloth, and that he was the older, illegitimate brother of Louis XIV. In the late 1840s, writer Alexandre Dumas elaborated on the story in the novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, the final installment of his classic D'Artagnan saga: here the prisoner is forced to wear an iron mask and is Louis XIV's identical twin. Dumas also presented a review of the popular theories about the prisoner extant in his time in the chapter "L'homme au masque de fer" in the sixth volume of his Crimes Celebres. What little is known about the historical Man in the Iron Mask is based mainly on correspondence between Saint-Mars and his superiors in Paris. The National Archives of France, on its official website, has now put the original data relating to a very important discovery about the Man in the Iron Mask: the inventories of the goods and papers of Benigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, who was his jailer for 34 years (one inventory was drawn up at the Bastille in 1708, the other at the citadel of Sainte-Marguerite in 1691, in which the notary describes his miserable first cell). These documents (64 and 68 pages in length) have been searched for in vain for more than a century and were thought to have been lost. They were discovered only in 2015, among the 100 million or so documents of the Minutier central des notaires. They show that some of the 800 documents in the possession of the jailer Saint-Mars were analysed after his death. These documents confirm the reputed avarice of Saint-Mars, who appears to have diverted the funds paid by the king Louis XIV for the prisoner. Among other things, for the first time we have a description of a cell occupied by the masked prisoner, which was miserable (containing only a sleeping mat), and not luxurious as was previously thought.