The Man Behind the Iron Mask (10 page)

3
.   
Queen Mother
: Marie de' Medici, 1574–1642, wife of Henri IV and mother of Louis XIII.

4
.   In a book entitled
Les Grandes Heures des Iles de Lérins
published in 1975, Jean-Jacques Antier reproduced in a French translation the text of a letter supposedly written by Benjamin Franklin to Sir James Jay on 28 November 1782. In this Franklin reported how he had talked with the Duc de Richelieu the day before on the subject of the Iron Mask and Richelieu had told him that the Iron Mask was the illegitimate child of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham. According to Monsieur Antier, this letter was found in a collection of previously unpublished letters printed in Baltimore in 1863. When asked about this letter, the librarians of the Benjamin Franklin Collection at the Yale University Library could find no record in their archives of any such letter written to Sir James Jay on the date given, nor of such a letter written to anyone on any date, and no trace of a book containing any kind of letter by Franklin published in Baltimore or elsewhere in 1863. Significantly enough, however, they did find a letter written by Franklin to Sir James Jay on 28 November 1782 though in that he spoke about some matter involving a certain Captain Francis Dundas and made absolutely no mention of Richelieu or the Iron Mask. When Monsieur Antier himself was asked about the letter which he had reproduced in his book, he could not remember where he had found it, neither the text nor the references he had given for it. While it seems unlikely that Franklin would have written two letters to Sir James Jay on the same day without making some reference to the first, however brief, in the second, it is nonetheless perfectly possible that a man like the Duc de Richelieu would have been capable of telling such a story about the Iron Mask. However, there would be no more reason to believe this story true than there is to believe Monsieur Antier's letter real.

5
.   Curiously enough Saint Léonard was the patron saint of prisoners as well as of hopeful and expectant mothers. It was believed that all prisoners who invoked his name were delivered from their chains and enabled to go free while their guards stood by powerless to stop them. His churches were often hung with broken chains left by escaped prisoners as proof of his miraculous intervention. There is however no tradition that he intervened in the case of Morelhie.

6
.   
Philippe
: 1640–1701. Only brother of Louis XIV. Inherited the title of Duc d'Orléans from his uncle Gaston and passed it on to his own son and descendants.

7
.   
Duc d'Orléans
: Louis Philippe Joseph, 1747–1793. Assumed the name ‘Egalite' as proof of his revolutionary spirit.

8
.   
Athénais de Montespan
: 1641–1707. She replaced Louise de La Vallière as Louis XIV's mistress in 1667.

9
.   
Dauphin
: Louis de France, 1661–1711, only legitimate son of Louis XIV.

10
.  
Grande Mademoiselle
: Duchesse de Montpensier, 1627–1693; daughter of Gaston.

11
.  
Lauzun
: Antonin Nompar de Caumont, Duc de Lauzun, 1632–1723. As will emerge in later chapters, he was himself a prisoner of Saint-Mars at Pignerol from 1671 to 1681.

12
.  The Cathedral of Arras was entirely destroyed during the Revolution.

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MORE FACES

I
f the name ‘Marchiali' is an anagram of ‘hic amiral', it could be applied equally well to another candidate: the predecessor of Vermandois as Grand Admiral of France, François de Vendôme, Duc de Beaufort. His candidature was first canvassed by Lagrange-Chancel in his letter to Fréron in 1758 and though at the time few people were prepared to take the proposition seriously, it has been argued again as recently as 1960.

Beaufort had the same royal grandfather as Louis XIV, his father Cesar de Bourbon, Duc de Vendôme, being the eldest son of Henri IV.
¹
Vendôme was older than Louis XIII by seven years, but illegitimate, being one of three royal children, two boys and a girl, born to Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort. Vendôme also had three children, two boys and a girl, of whom Beaufort was the youngest. Big and brawny with long blond hair, Beaufort looked like a Viking and his looks did not belie him. Having been raised in the country with an education limited to the arts of combat and the hunt, he was a true barbarian: a superb athlete and a prodigious fighter, uncouth and almost illiterate, simpleminded, thick-skinned and self-assertive. He saw himself as acting a central rôle in the affairs of the state and played to the gallery for all it was worth, propelling himself into the spotlight whenever the opportunity offered. His oafish lack of manners and his naive lack of discernment made him a figure of ridicule at court; but it was this very absence of education and refinement, this honest muddle-headed blundering in search of a hero's rôle, which drew the ordinary people to him, while his genuine courage and energy in war and adversity earned him the admiration of all.

In 1636, at the age of twenty, he had already won honour and favour by distinguishing himself in action against the Spanish, but in the intrigues of court he took the side of the disgraced Queen, Anne of Austria, and the enemies of Louis XIII's minister, Cardinal Richelieu. His father had always been prominent in the factions hostile to Richelieu and from 1626 to 1630 had been imprisoned at Vincennes for involvement in the Chalais Conspiracy. In 1642, he himself was implicated in another conspiracy against Richelieu, having to take refuge in England, but later that same year Richelieu died and so he was able to return. The Queen had absolute confidence in him. In her own words he was ‘the most honest man in France' and, on the eve of the King's death in May 1643, she entrusted her children to his safekeeping, afraid that the King's brother, Gaston, or the Prince de Condé, who was commander-in-chief of the army, might attempt to kidnap the future King.

In the power struggle which followed, however, the Queen as Regent found her true champion not in the plain he-man Beaufort but in the wily con-man Mazarin. Opposition to Mazarin rallied behind Beaufort, but in September 1643 the Queen had him arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes. There he remained, rejected and ignored, until in May 1648 he managed to slip past his guards and escape. By that time the political situation had degenerated into an open squabble between Mazarin and the Parlement of Paris, the first of a confused series of violent conflicts, known later under the general name of the Fronde. Mazarin had the backing of the Queen, but the people of Paris gave their support to the Parlement with such vigour that she and her children fled the city and appealed to Condé for protection. The only other great military commander in France at that time, Maréchal Turenne, was sympathetic to the Parlement, but he failed to win over the troops under his command and so took refuge with the Spanish. Beaufort then offered his services to the Parlement and with a group of other nobles was given command of a newly raised army of 12,000 men.

These troops, untrained, undisciplined and ill-equipped, were so ignominously routed by the forces of the Queen led by Condé that their generals were ridiculed and their efforts turned to laughter. Condé himself called the conflict ‘the war of the chamber-pots' and said it should only be recorded in comic verse. For Beaufort however the experience turned out to be a personal triumph. The common people of Paris were captivated by him and their adulation was not diminished by his defeat. In the time the conflict lasted he lived in the heart of the city and mixed with his raggle-taggle neighbours on equal terms, drinking and joking with them, gossiping and arguing, brawling and womanising. His enemies called him the ‘King of the Market' but at a time when the King of England had just been executed by his people
²
and the King of France was in hiding from his, it was not a title to be scoffed at.

In the course of 1649 everyone changed partners. Condé and the generals who had been opposed to him joined forces against the rest and in January 1650 the rest collaborated to have three of the generals, including Condé, arrested. Condé's supporters in the country threatened insurrection, and in February 1651 the Queen banished Mazarin and had the three generals released. Beaufort at this time kept guard on the Palais Royal to be sure that the Queen did not try to take the young King to join Mazarin. For all his supposed stupidity, Beaufort demonstrated more consistency than most of his fellow disputants. Throughout the length of this burlesque and bloody war, his actions were motivated only by his opposition to Mazarin, and this in spite of the fact that his father had aligned himself with Mazarin from the first and, in that very month of February, his elder brother had taken one of Mazarin's nieces in marriage.

Condé, meanwhile, impatient for a showdown, left Paris to raise an army and in January 1652 Mazarin returned from exile, also with an army. Then in a final comic-book change-about, Condé who had won all his glory as a general in victories over the Spanish army turned to Spain for help, while Mazarin gave the command of his forces to Turenne, who just three years before had tried to get his troops to turn against Mazarin and had since then been fighting with the Spanish against the French. Beaufort and his sister's husband, the Duc de Nemours, shared the command under Condé. Their victories were brilliant, their defeats honourable, but for Beaufort the experience was a personal disaster. He quarrelled with his brother-in-law and in July 1652 fought and killed him in a duel. Twelve days later Mazarin was dismissed from office and his enemies, with the exception of Condé, were finally persuaded to submit to the will of the young King. Beaufort was banished from Paris and the court and was not restored to favour until six years later. Mazarin, by contrast, was recalled to office after only six months.

In 1663, two years after the death of Mazarin, Beaufort succeeded his father as Grand Admiral of France, a post which included control over trade as well as war, his full title being ‘Grand Master, Chief and Superintendent-General of the Navigation and Commerce of France'. As it was, however, the ships and men which constituted the French Fleet at the time were a beggarly assortment not even capable of protecting the French coast from pirate raids. Louis XIV's ministers were aware of the need to build a new fleet, and Colbert especially was convinced of the enormous political and economic advantages to be had from a major investment in sea-power; but none of the ministers, Colbert in particular, was prepared to see Beaufort at the head of such an enterprise. Both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of War sought to supervise and control the new admiral. His authority was questioned, restricted, undermined, and yet he went to work with such dash and drive to transform the little he had into a fighting force that in the following year he was able to begin a series of expeditions against the Barbary pirates along the coast of the Maghreb. As always his personal valour in the fighting was spectacular and his popularity with the lower ranks resounding, but as in any campaign he ever led the endeavour itself, though not an outright failure, was far from being a success.

In 1669, Louis XIV was persuaded by the Vatican to send an expedition to Crete, at that time known as Candy, to help the Venetians against the Turks. For twenty-four years the island had been under siege and only the chief city, which is today Iraklion, had not surrendered. The reasons which motivated Louis XIV to make such a gesture were political not religious, but in appearance at least it was a crusade against the infidel. The expeditionary force was 7,000 strong and was led by the Duc de Navailles with Beaufort in overall command. The Duc de Vivonne, who was the brother of the King's new mistress, Athénais de Montespan, was commander of the galleys and among the other officers was Colbert's brother, Colbert de Maulevrier, and Beaufort's nephew, the young Philippe de Vendôme. From the Pope, Beaufort received the title ‘Captain-General of the Naval Army of the Church' and from the King the order that under no circumstances was he personally to set foot on Crete or engage in any fighting.

The fleet reached Crete on 19 June and found the city in a worse plight than had been anticipated; one of the two bastions already fallen, the streets burning and blocked with debris, the population decimated and in despair, the garrison reduced to half its number, sick and demoralized. Beaufort joined Navailles in a council of war with the Venetian commanders. Morosini and Montbrun, at which it was decided to disembark the troops by night on the 24th for a sortie at first light on the 25th. Against the express orders of the King and the earnest advice of everyone else, Beaufort refused to be left on board. He went ashore with the troops and took command of the left wing with Colbert's brother.

When the attack began, the Turks, taken by surprise, ran for their lives and the French went after them deep into their camp. In the midst of the charging ranks, however, an ammunition dump, hit by a chance bullet, blew up; a battalion of French Guards was suddenly and completely annihilated. Shock and confusion at the tremendous explosion, horror and incomprehension at the appalling carnage, stopped the French army in its tracks; then, convinced that the ground ahead was mined, the front line turned back upon the rest. The French troops who stood firm were trampled by the troops who fled, or took them for Turks in the dark and cut them down. The Turks finding themselves at an advantage launched a counter-attack and what was left of the French army broke up. Beaufort, trying to rally his troops, was abandoned on the field and only when the beaten army had taken refuge inside the city was it realized that he was missing.

Two days later, the Intendant of the Fleet, whose name was Brodart, wrote to Colbert to report that Beaufort was still missing and that whether he was ‘dead or captive' no one could say. All that was known for certain was that he had been ‘left among the enemy'. Spies had been sent into the Turkish camp to find out what had happened. Sometime later one such spy was said to have reported that Beaufort was dead, that he had been killed in the fighting and his body, like the bodies of all the other French dead, had been beheaded and stripped; that his head had been thrown in a heap with the rest in front of the Grand Vizier's tent and his armour had been sold. An officer named Flacourt, who was despatched under a flag of truce to the Turkish camp, could not find Beaufort among the prisoners and yet a prisoner named Montigny, who was allowed to examine the heads, could not find Beaufort's amongst them. Morosini thought he had seen Beaufort's headless body in golden armour on the field and Montbrun later maintained that the Grand Vizier had sent Beaufort's head to Constantinople where for three days it had been carried throught the streets on the end of a pole as a sign that the Christians had been defeated.