The Man Behind the Iron Mask (9 page)

As candidate for the Iron Mask, Vermandois was not new. On the contrary he had been one of the first contenders, proposed by an anonymous writer as early as 1745, six years before Voltaire's first published reference, and his case had been championed thereafter by Henri Griffet, the man who brought Du Junca's journal to light. The tragically short life of Vermandois, as it is officially recorded, is quickly told.

He was born on 2 October 1667, the natural son of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière, their fifth love-child and their last. The love in which he was conceived died before he was born, and while he was still a small child his parents turned away from each other and from him, his father drawn to another woman and the children of her love, his mother to God and the isolation of a Carmelite convent. He and a sister, the only ones of the five children to survive infancy, were well provided for nonetheless. Acknowledged and proclaimed legitimate by their father, they were raised in the home of Colbert, the Controller of Finance, and given status and position at court: at the age of two, Vermandois was named Grand Admiral of France and at the age of thirteen, his sister was married to the Prince de Conti. They were, by all reliable accounts, as good-looking and good-hearted as their mother, and they were well-liked at court in spite of the active hostility of the new favourite, Athénais de Montespan,
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who saw them as rivals to the fortunes of her own children.

At the beginning of November 1683, soon after his sixteenth birthday, Vermandois was sent to join the army in Flanders and took part in the opening skirmishes of the siege of Courtrai. Only after he had distinguished himself in the battle line was it realized that he had been hiding a fever and was in fact very ill. On 4 November the King was informed of his son's condition and sent orders that he be brought home immediately. The boy, however, was too ill to move. On 8 November he was bled and seemed to recover, but on 12 November his condition worsened and on 16 November he received the last sacraments. Throughout his illness the King received daily reports from the commanding officer, who was present on the night of 18 November when the young man died. The body was transferred in solemn procession to Arras on 24 November and on 27 November was interred with doleful pomp in the cathedral choir. The King then made an endowment of 10,000 livres to the cathedral chapter so that a requiem mass would be said every day for a year and a mass of remembrance on 18 November each year in perpetuity.

The unofficial version, offered by the anonymous writer in 1745, appeared in a book entitled
Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'Histoire de Perse
, which presented events at the French Court under the guise of Persian history. A simple key to the fictitious Persian names, published with the third edition in 1759, left no doubt as to the real significance of what was described. The Persian king, ‘Cha-Abas', was Louis XIV; the ‘Indian maiden' was Louise de La Vallière; their son, ‘Giafer', was Vermandois; the King's son and heir, ‘Sephir Mirza', was the Dauphin;
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the place named ‘Feldran' was Flanders; the ‘Island of Ormuz' was the island of Sainte-Marguerite; and the citadel of ‘Ispahan' was the Bastille.

This prince was passionately fond of women and had several favourites, one of the first of whom was an Indian who though plain was tall and shapely and blessed with a heart and mind to compensate for her lack of beauty. Her heart was full of that delicate tenderness which constitutes the magic of love and is perhaps the most important quality in a woman. Cha-Abas loved her beyond all measure and had a son by her whom he called Giafer. This young prince was raised with the greatest possible care; he was handsome, well-built and quick-witted, but arrogant and hot-tempered. To Sephir Mirza, the heir to the crown and the only son recognized by Cha-Abas, Giafer could not bring himself to show the respect due to a prince born to be his king.

These two princes, who were about the same age, had very different characters. Sephir Mirza had all the agreeable qualities Giafer had, but by the gentleness, affability and generosity of his disposition altogether surpassed him. It was these virtues, as admirable as they are rare in a prince born to succeed to the throne, which made Sephir Mirza the object of Giafer's enmity, and the reason why he lost no opportunity to declare how much he pitied the Persians, destined as they were to be ruled one day by a prince who lacked character and the strength to command. Cha-Abas was aware of Giafer's conduct and conscious of the impropriety of it, but his royal authority yielded to his paternal love and, absolute monarch though he was, he could not assert his will upon this son who abused his love.

At last one day Giafer forgot himself so far as to strike Prince Sephir Mirza. Cha-Abas, informed at once, feared for the guilty young man, but, whatever desire he might have had to pretend ignorance of the offence, the respect he owed to himself and to his crown and the commotion caused by the affair at court made it impossible for him to heed the promptings of his heart. With great reluctance he summoned his closest counsellors, explained to them his painful problem and asked for their advice. All agreed, considering the enormity of the crime and conforming to the laws of the state, that the penalty was death. What a blow for a doting father!

One of the ministers, more aware than the others of the suffering of Cha-Abas, told him that there was a way of punishing Giafer without taking his life: that he should be sent at once to the army, which at that time was on the frontiers of Feldran, and soon after his arrival it should be put about that he had contracted plague, thus to frighten and keep away anyone who might otherwise wish to see him; that after a few days of his pretended illness he should be said to be dead and then while the whole army witnessed his burial, with funeral honours worthy of his birth, he should be moved by night with the utmost secrecy to the citadel on the Island of Ormuz, there to live out his days. This proposal was well-received by everyone and especially by the unhappy Cha-Abas.

People of loyalty and discretion were chosen to carry out the scheme and Giafer left for the army with a magnificent retinue. Everything went off as planned; while the death of the unfortunate prince was mourned throughout the camp, he was taken by unfrequented roads to the Island of Ormuz and handed over to the governor there, who had received prior orders from Cha-Abas not to let his prisoner be seen by anyone.

One sole servant, who was party to the secret, was taken along with the prince, but he died on the journey. The officers in charge disfigured his face with knife slashes to stop him being recognized and, having stripped him as a further precaution, left him stretched out beside the road and continued on their way.

The governor of the citadel of Ormuz treated his prisoner with the greatest respect: he personally served him at table, carrying the dishes from the door of the apartment where they were brought by the cooks, none of whom ever saw Giafer's face. One day the prince contrived to scratch his name with the point of a knife on the back of a plate. A slave who found the plate thought to curry favour by taking it to the governor, imagining that he would be rewarded for his trouble, but the poor man was mistaken: he lost his life on the spot and the secret which was of such great importance was buried with him. A useless precaution since, as is demonstrated by this account, the secret was badly kept …

Giafer stayed several years in the citadel of Ormuz and was only made to leave it to go to Ispahan, when Cha-Abas, in recognition of the governor's faithful service, gave him the then vacant governorship of that citadel. It was in effect a prudent measure to make Giafer follow the destiny of the man to whom he had first been confided. It would have been acting against the laws of good sense to enlist a new confidant who might have proved less loyal and less conscientious.

Both at Ormuz and Ispahan the precaution was taken to put a mask on the prince whenever, because of sickness or some other circumstance, it was necesary to let him be seen. Several reliable witnesses maintained that they saw this masked prisoner more than once, and they reported that he addressed the governor with easy familiarity, although he by contrast was always most respectful.

If one wonders why, having outlived Cha-Abas and Sephir Mirza by so many years, Giafer was not set free as would have been proper, one should remember that it was not possible to re-establish him in his original condition, rank and dignity. His tomb existed and there were not only witnesses but written records of his burial, the authenticity of which could not be destroyed in the minds of the people, who to this day are still persuaded that Giafer died of plague in the army camp of Feldran.

It should be noted at once that as an account of what happened to Vermandois, this story rests upon a number of important misrepresentations of fact. Never was it said that Vermandois had contracted plague and at no time was it even suggested that his illness was contagious. Nor was there ever any commotion at court over a quarrel of any kind involving Vermandois and the Dauphin. Had there been so much as a rumour that Vermandois had struck the Dauphin it would have been mentioned by someone at the time, but nowhere in all the recorded gossip of the period is there any trace of such an incident. In a letter written on 6 June 1700, the Princess Palatine referred to a story published in German that a son of James II of England had once given the Dauphin a box on the ear and about that she declared: ‘There is not a word of truth in it.' If anyone else had ever boxed the Dauphin's ear she would surely have known and would certainly have said so. There is moreover no evidence for the belief that Vermandois disliked the Dauphin or lacked proper respect for him, and the fact that the sister of Vermandois was always one of the Dauphin's closest friends makes it unlikely that there was ever any enmity between them. One might add furthermore that the Dauphin was a less agreeable person and Vermandois a more agreeable person than their respective representations in Persian dress, that the Dauphin was six years older than Vermandois and that so far as Vermandois was concerned Louis XIV was never a doting father.

Henri Griffet was nonetheless convinced that the tale of Giafer was the true story of Vermandois and the solution to the mystery of the Iron Mask. To support his opinion he had little real evidence to offer, but a passage he found in the
Mémoires
of the Grande Mademoiselle,
¹⁰
who was first cousin to Louis XIV, did at least establish as fact the claim that Vermandois had done something serious enough to be in disgrace shortly before his departure for the army:

Some days previously, news came that the army, which so far that year had done nothing, had laid siege to Courtrai. M. de Vermandois left to go there and M. de Lauzun
¹¹
left Paris for the same destination. M. de Vermandois had only recently returned to court. The King had not been pleased with his conduct – he had taken part in orgies – and had banished him from his sight. He stayed on at Versailles but without seeing anyone, only going to the academy and in the morning to mass. The King did not like the company he had been keeping. One did not know the details and one did not wish to know. It caused Madame de La Vallière a great deal of pain. He was given a good talking to and he made a full confession, so it was supposed he would behave himself.

Unquestionably, Vermandois had been in disgrace, but the punishment described is perfectly consistent with the kind of discipline any sensible parent might decide necessary for an adolescent in danger of being led astray by bad company. There is certainly no suggestion of a crime serious enough to merit the fate of the Iron Mask, and one can be sure that the young man's disgrace was represented in the worst possible light by the Grande Mademoiselle. Besides being a frustrated old maid and a malicious gossip, she was a fervent supporter of the Montespan faction, and Vermandois was the pet aversion of Madame de Montespan. As the older half-brother of her sons, the Duc de Maine and the Comte de Toulouse, she considered him to be their chief rival in the affection and favour of the King, and so missed no opportunity to defame him. What the Grande Mademoiselle had to say about the tragic death of Vermandois makes it clear that, if he had ever been guilty of anything more serious than ordinary adolescent misbehaviour, she would have recorded it: ‘Madame de Montespan sent me a letter. She said that M. de Vermandois was dead and that the King had given his charge of admiral to the Comte de Toulouse. He had fallen sick at the siege of Courtrai after drinking too much brandy. People said that he showed great courage and they talked about his character and conduct as people do about someone they like. As for me I was not at all upset. I was only too pleased that M. de Maine no longer had a brother to take precedence over him.'

What Griffet lacked in evidence for his advocacy of Vermandois as the Iron Mask, he made up for in ingenuity. He proposed that ‘Marchioly', the name used on the Iron Mask's burial certificate, which he read as ‘Marchiali', was an anagram of ‘hic amiral' (i.e. ‘in this space the admiral') and thus denoted Vermandois as Grand Admiral of France. Of all the Iron Mask theories of the eighteenth century, Griffet's was the most popular, and the conviction that Vermandois had died wearing a mask in the Bastille became so entrenched and widespread that in 1786, just three years before the pretended discovery of the letter hidden in the wall, Louis XVI ordered the opening of the tomb in Arras Cathedral. This was done in the presence of the Bishop of Arras and the Attorney-General who together signed an official report testifying to the discovery of ‘a body complete and well-formed'. Arguably, of course, it was not the body of Vermandois, but an extra body posed unlimited problems for the argument.
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NOTES

1
.   Nicolas Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned 5 September 1661.

2
.   The Duc de Beaufort disappeared at the siege of Candy 25 June 1669.