The Man Behind the Iron Mask (23 page)

The King's mistress in 1680 was Madame de Montespan in name, Madame de Fontanges in bed and Madame de Maintenon in everything else. Madame de Montespan, it is said, sought to clear the field for herself by poisoning Madame de Fontages and slandering Madame de Maintenon. For twenty years Madame de Maintenon had been a widow and for eight years before that she had been married to a man who was paralysed. In 1680 her reputation was pure beyond reproach, but only, so Madame de Montespan said, because she had successfully covered up her scandalous goings-on as a frustrated young wife and a merry young widow. Her husband had been an impoverished poet, and both before and after his death she had received gifts of money from powerful friends, among whom had been Fouquet.

When Fouquet was arrested in 1661, a box of love-letters was discovered among his papers and a great many ladies at court were embarrassed to find themselves in print, exposed as his one-time mistresses, paid for services rendered as concubines, agents or spies. The actual letters no longer exist, but the alleged texts were published. Two of them, which in the original publication were thought to be by Madame de La Baulme, were later attributed to Madame de Maintenon. It was Jean Louis Carra who was responsible for this attribution in a book he wrote on the Bastille in 1789. The texts he gave are as follows:

Letter One: ‘I do not know you well enough to love you and perhaps when I get to know you I will like you less. I have always fled from vice and naturally I flee from sin, but I assure you that I hate poverty more. I have received your 10,000 écus and, if you wish to bring me 10,000 more in the next two days, I will see what I must do.'

Letter Two: ‘Until now I was so convinced of my strength that I would have defied the whole world. But I assure you that the last meeting I had with you left me spellbound. I found in your conversation a thousand enchantments which I had not expected, indeed, if I ever see you alone, I do not know what will happen.'

Whether or not these two letters were written by Madame de Maintenon, and indeed Carra had no grounds for his attribution, Lacroix would have us believe that her past relationship with Fouquet was a source of embarrassment for her and of humiliation for the King. It was moreover a repetition of the same painful experience which the King had suffered twenty years before with Madame de La Vallière. Whatever he saw as gold had been touched by the Superintendent Sun: such was his neurosis. The repetition of the nightmare took him by surprise. With Madame de La Vallière forgotten behind the walls of a convent, he had been prepared to forgive Fouquet, but when his plans for Fouquet's release were already under way, he heard the gossip about Madame de Maintenon, as told by Madame de Montespan, and his old anguish, with all his fear and hatred of Fouquet, returned. Thus the death of Fouquet was invented to avoid the necessity of liberating him, and the mask became a necessity to hide the deception.

On 2 May 1679, less than a year before Fouquet's supposed death and less than two and a half years before Saint-Mars moved to Exiles with two prisoners, one of whom was the Iron Mask, the state prison at Pignerol received a new prisoner who, to judge from one contemporary report, was actually wearing a mask when he was brought in. According to this account, which was published in July 1687, just eight years after the prisoner's arrest, the man in question was ‘the secretary of the Duke of Mantua' and he had been kidnapped in Savoy. The French ambassador in Turin had invited him out for a day's hunting and had led him into a trap. A couple of miles outside the city he had been ‘surrounded by ten or twelve horsemen who siezed him, disguised him, masked him and took him off to Pignerol'. The information was given in a letter from Italy which appeared in a periodical of history and current affairs printed in Leyden. At the time of its publication, Saint-Mars had just moved the Iron Mask from Exiles to Sainte-Marguerite and the author of the letter, showing himself to be remarkably well-informed, went on to give the very latest developments. ‘At Pignerol he was too close to Italy and, although he was carefully guarded, it was feared that the walls might talk. He was therefore taken from there and sent to the islands of Sainte-Marguerite where he is at present under guard of M. de Saint-Marc (sic) who is the governor there.'

In Spring 1687, when Saint-Mars and his mysterious prisoner moved to Sainte-Marguerite, everyone in the region was talking about it. On 3 May, the Abbè Mauvans, who had visited the island before their arrival and had heard eye-witness accounts of their journey through Grasse, wrote to tell a friend in Aix-en-Provence all about it. M. de Mazauges, who had visited the island with him, wrote the same news to a friend in Paris, a certain M. de Villermont, who replied on 20 August: ‘I have been assured that the prisoner, whom you told me about recently as being taken to the islands of Sainte-Marguerite in such an extraordinary manner, is an Italian named Count Matthioli, formerly the secretary of the Duke of Mantua, whom he betrayed by disclosing secret information to the Spanish.'

Matthioli's name was variously spelt in official French correspondence, but most commonly appeared as ‘Marthioly' which, when pronounced with a strong Southern French accent sounds more like ‘Markhioly'. There seems little doubt that the name ‘Marchioly', which appeared on the burial certificate of the Iron Mask in 1703, was a simple mis-spelling of the same name. Evidently the parish priest of Saint-Paul, who made the certificate, had been told by Rosarges, who was from the south of France, that the prisoner's name was ‘Markhioly', by which he meant ‘Matthioli'. To a man like Du Junca the name meant nothing, but to anyone acquainted with French interests and involvements in Northern Italy it would have been instantly recognizable as Count Ercole Antonio Matthioli, one-time secretary of state and supernumerary senator of the Duke of Mantua, who had disappeared from the city of Turin more than twenty-four years before.

After all, it seems, there is not, and never was, any real mystery about the identity of the famous masked prisoner. The information was always there in public records and popular publications for anyone to read, but not until 1770 was this realized. In that year a certain Baron de Heiss wrote to the authors of the
Journal Encyclopédique
quoting from the account published in Holland in 1687, and further evidence was quickly added. In 1788, Louis Dutens in his
Correspondence interceptée
reported that Louis XV was asked by his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, to reveal the identity of the Iron Mask and he replied ‘that he believed it was a minister of an Italian prince'. In 1801 Pierre Roux de Fazillac produced government documents to support this belief and in 1822 it was confirmed with the publication of the
Mémoirs
of Madame de Campan, who had been first lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie-Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI.

Soon after Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, Madame de Campan reports, he began to go through the papers of his grandfather, Louis XV. He promised to tell his wife anything he discovered relative to the Iron Mask, though it was his opinion ‘from what he had heard said on the matter, that this Iron Mask had become a subject of such inexhaustible conjecture only because the work of a celebrated writer had excited interest in the detention of a state prisoner who had some peculiar tastes and habits'.
²
When eventually he had examined all the documents, he announced to his wife, in the presence of Madame de Campan, ‘that he had found nothing in the secret papers analogous to the existence of this prisoner and that he had therefore questioned M. de Maurepas about it'. The Comte de Maurepas, who was seventy-three years old at that time, had come to office as Secretary of State under Louis XV, just fifteen years after the Iron Mask's death, and his reply was ‘that the prisoner was a subject of the Duke of Mantua who because of his disposition to intrigue was a very dangerous character. He was lured to the frontier, arrested there and kept a prisoner first at Pignerol and then in the Bastille.' As for the mask, Madame de Campan concludes, it is altogether possible ‘that the captive Italian sometimes showed himself on a terrace of his prison with his face so covered', since that was just one of ‘the peculiar tastes and habits' of Italians in general; it was ‘formerly the custom in Italy for men and women to wear a mask of black velvet when they exposed themselves to the sun.'

In December, 1677, when the French first made contact with Matthioli, he was living quietly in Verona with his wife and two children, a brilliant and ambitious man thwarted just two years before in what had been a promising career. He was bitterly disappointed and disillusioned, but at the age of thirty-seven not altogether prepared to give up the hope of re-establishing himself. The Duke of Mantua was living in Venice, a profiligate who at the age of twenty-five was addicted to the giddy masquerade of Venetian high society, his only interest apart from dissipation and depravity being his need to find enough money to pay his debts. Government of his subjects he had left to his mother who stayed on in the ducal palace at Mantua, sharing her power and her bed with a monk called Bulgarini.

As a young man lecturing in law at the University of Bologna, Matthioli had been picked out by the old Duke of Mantua to become his Secretary of State. The Duke had died soon after and, since at that time his son and heir had been only thirteen years of age, government control had passed into the hands of the dowager Duchess. Matthioli's influence over the young Duke had been strong and so he had been kept on as a supernumerary member of the senate, a position which carried with it the title of count, and his future rise to eminence had seemed assured. When the young Duke had come of age, however, he had proved himself a wastrel, ready to leave the reins of government in anybody's hands so long as he was supplied with money enough to finance his debauches. A struggle for power had ensued and Bulgarini, backed by the Duchess, had forced Matthioli out.

The French viewed this situation with interest. The Duke of Mantua was also the Marquis of Monferrato and the French had their eyes on Casale, the capital of Monferrato, which was a fortified town on the River Po to the east of Turin. They were as eager to acquire Casale as an outpost as they had been to acquire Pignerol as a frontier-post. Between these two citadels, Turin, the capital of Savoy, could be kept under virtual siege, and the south-east corner of France would project its defences deep into Italy with a bastion to threaten Milan and Genoa. The Duke of Mantua was kept so short of money by Bulgarini and was in consequence so harrassed by creditors that an offer to buy Casale for a large sum of ready cash was sure to tempt him. Secrecy was, however, essential if French occupation of the town was to be managed peacefully. There would be an uproar the moment the sale was realized; not only the Savoyards, but the Spanish, who controlled Lombardy, would be certain to object in the strongest terms. In the opinion of the French ambassador to Venice, the Abbé d'Estrades, the best way to approach the young Duke was to go through Bulgarini's rival, Matthioli, who was sure to be delighted to have an opportunity to reassert himself in Mantuan affairs.

A journalist, named Giuliani, who was a secret agent for the French, made contact with Matthioli in Verona and sounded him out. As expected he was interested, and a meeting was arranged with d'Estrades, who flattered and encouraged him. By the middle of January 1678, Matthioli was negotiating the French offer with the Duke of Mantua and had even exchanged polite letters with Louis XIV himself. The Duke wanted a million livres for Casale, but the French were only prepared to put up 300,000. Matthioli finally fixed a meeting between d'Estrades and the Duke at a masked ball in Venice during Carnival when, as d'Estrades informed the King, ‘everyone, even the Doge, the oldest senators, the cardinals and the papal nuntio, must go about in masks.' They met in a small square and there, at midnight, masked amidst the masked crowd, they discussed the deal for over an hour. D'Estrades refused to raise the offer and the Duke, hard pressed for money, eventually accepted.

Matthioli, whose discretion, it was thought, could be relied upon, was commissioned to represent the Duke in drawing up a final agreement and for this he was invited to Paris. When the time came for him to leave he excused himself, saying that he was ill. The Duke, who wanted his money as quickly as possible, urged him to go and finally, with the promise that when the deal was done he would make him his prime minister, persuaded him to go. In October Matthioli and Giuliani left for Switzerland and from there slipped into France. On 8 December the contract was ready and Matthioli signed in the Duke's name. The money was to be paid in silver, half when the Duke gave his ratification and half when the French troops took possession. Matthioli's good offices were much appreciated by the French, and before returning to Italy, he was invited to a secret audience with the king at which he received from the King's own hand two hundred golden louis for himself, a large diamond from the royal collection and promises of preferment for his family.

In January, secret preparations for the occupation of Casale were begun. Nicolas Catinat, who was then a brigadier-general, was appointed governor-to-be and, using the name Richemont as a cover, went to stay with Saint-Mars in Pignerol. The troops who were to serve as garrison were kept at Briançon until the end of February, then sent to Pignerol to join him. Meanwhile the Abbé d'Estrades had been transferred to Turin to be at the centre of things when Casale changed hands and a special envoy, Baron d'Asfeld, was sent to Venice for a meeting at which he was to receive from Matthioli the contract of sale ratified by the Duke. The French were, however, apprehensive. In mid-February Louis XIV had been informed by the Duchess-Regent of Savoy that she knew all about the secret agreement. He had chosen to go ahead with the plan anyway, but not without misgivings. On 9 March, the day before his rendezvous with Matthioli in Venice, Baron d'Asfeld, travelling through Lombardy, was arrested by order of the Spanish governor of Milan. The secret, it then emerged, was known to everyone.