Who is hiding behind the iron mask? (part 2)

From the 18th century on, hypotheses on the identity of the prisoner in the iron mask continued to circulate in France.

Twin of Louis XIV, elder brother born of adulterous love, the mystery feeds rumors and inspires novelists.

In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars solves the enigma of the iron mask!

In his first edition of "Siècle de Louis XIV", Voltaire will paint a portrait of the iron mask which is in filigree that of the Sun King. Could it be his eldest or his twin? In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars reveals the identity of the iron mask. He tells in particular how this mystery took part in the discrediting of the monarchy. .. 

The legend will quickly take hold of the character.

Many accounts will circulate on the events which would have occurred when he was a prisoner in the Fort of Sainte-Marguerite.

We embellished his stay, it was said that the Governor Saint-Mars obeyed all his desires, provided him with the fine linen, lace and luxurious clothes he wanted.

They even brought him a guitar and behind his bars, the man in the iron mask sang melancholy melodies. 

Want to listen to the other episodes of this podcast?

>> Find them on our Europe1.fr site and on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, Deezer, Spotify, Dailymotion and YouTube, or your usual listening platforms.

>> Find here the user manual to listen to all the podcasts of Europe 1

It is said that one day the unnamed prisoner wrote a few words with the tip of his knife on a silver dish which he threw from his window. Because of the triple bars it included, the feat seems difficult! Having seen the shiny object fall, a nearby fisherman hastened to pick it up and bring it back to the Governor. The latter asked him if he had read what was written on the plate… The fisherman told him that he could not read. Saint-Mars replied: "You are very happy not to know how to read!" ...

It was from the 18th century that we began to launch names supposed to identify the man in the iron mask.

We have spoken of the Duke of Beaufort, grandson of a bastard of Henri IV, officially dead at the siege of Candia, in Crete, in 1669 and whose body we had not found.

There was also talk of the young Count of Vermandois, natural son of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière, who died in 1683 of a fever contracted at the siege of Courtrai.

But was he really dead?

He could also be the Duke of Monmouth, bastard of Charles II of England.

The problem was that he had been beheaded in 1685 for having revolted against his uncle Jacques II ... 

A strange hypothesis is circulating

But the most disturbing hypothesis and that which was the most widespread was scaffolded by the Marquis de Barbezieux. This close collaborator of Louis XIV had been his Secretary of State for War. But he was lazy, loved drinking bouts and thin parties. His escapades ended up annoying the King. In 1700 he refused to allow him to enter the Conseil d'En Haut, the supreme organ of the monarchy. Saint-Simon recounts that then: "He indulged in debauchery with his friends more than usual, to dispel his grief. He had built between Versailles and Vaucresson, at the end of the park of Saint-Cloud, a house that the Pond called… He went there often and it was there that he tried to drown his displeasure with his friends, in good food and other secret pleasures. "

It was at L'Etang that he began to talk about the man in the iron mask.

He knew practically nothing about Eustache Danger except that he had been Fouquet's valet.

He had heard of his masked trip to the Bastille and the rumors it had generated.

To his friends, he began to tell that behind the man in the iron mask hid a terrible state secret.

If we hid his face, it is because he was too well known: he was the elder brother of Louis XIV, born of the adulterous love affair of Queen Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham!

After having stated this enormity, Barbezieux is seized with a nasty sore throat and a fever. He died five days later, on January 5, 1701. He had placed his mistress, Mlle de Saint-Quentin, in his will. After Barbezieux's death, she retired to Chartres and began to tell the story of the iron mask which had been explained to her by her late lover. The historian Charpentier goes to see it and tells its story in the book he wrote then "Bastille unveiled". It is from this work that Voltaire will make his honey!

Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille from August 21, 1717 to April 14, 1718 for having accused the Regent of incest with his daughter, the Duchess of Berry.

He then prepares his "Century of Louis XIV" and little by little, he will distill the fable of the Marquis de Barbezieux.

On October 20, 1738, he wrote to Abbé Du Bos, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy:

"I am fairly educated about the adventure of the man in the iron mask, who died in the Bastille. I spoke to people who served him."

A disturbing prisoner ... 

Abbot Du Bos, in his response, warns him. He knows that the man in the iron mask had been Fouquet's servant and that he could know his secrets. But if he has no absolute proof, he advises him not to go further: it is too dangerous. In his first edition of "Siècle de Louis XIV", Voltaire will then make a portrait of the iron mask, which is in filigree that of the Sun King: "He was a size above the ordinary, young, of the most beautiful and noble figure but he wore a mask whose chin bar had steel springs which gave him the freedom to eat. "

And in 1771, in the second edition of "Questions on the Encyclopedia", Voltaire confesses.

He writes that: "The iron mask was undoubtedly a brother and an older brother of Louis XIV whose mother had this taste for fine linen."

However, Voltaire refutes the paternity of the Duke of Buckingham.

The man was an older brother of the King to whom Queen Anne of Austria was said to have given birth in secret.

This claim comes at a time when the foundations of royal power are beginning to falter.

The monarchy is experiencing its most serious political crisis since the Fronde.

To make Louis XIV a cruel monarch who had inflicted such treatment on his brother was timely.

Discrediting the monarchy is then quite fashionable and Voltaire does not deprive himself of it.

The Revolution arrives. On July 22, 1789, we discovered "the skeleton of the iron mask" in a dungeon in the Bastille. There he was, in a room that hadn't been opened for three quarters of a century, chains around his neck, feet and hands. An engraving from the time shows the skeleton of the prisoner covered with armor crowning with laurels a woman representing Liberty in front of a chained Louis XVI. The legend is quite revolutionary: "The man in the iron mask freed from his irons salutes the Republic".

Obviously, all of this makes no sense.

The man in the iron mask did not live in a dungeon but in an apartment and if he had been forced to wear a velvet mask, he had never worn any chain.

In addition, he had been religiously buried.

But the symbol was too beautiful: the iron mask, expiatory victim of the absolute and ruthless monarch that was the Sun King.

The man in the iron mask: a twin of Louis XIV? 

Under the Revolution, a new hypothesis will arise.

Too bad Voltaire did not have the idea!

It is a certain Dorat-Cubière who, in his "Voyage to the Bastille" on July 16, 1789, states that the masked man would be a twin brother of the Sun King, imprisoned for life because the Salic law had not provided for anything. in the event of a royal birth of twins.

The idea has a great future! 

At the same time, the Mémoires du Maréchal de Richelieu appeared, obviously an apocryphal work. He explains what happened. The unwanted child was born on September 5, 1638, eight and a half hours after the future Louis XIV, during the King's supper. While the first childbirth had taken place in the presence of the whole Court as required by the Etiquette, the second took place clandestinely. The only people informed are the Bishop of Meaux, the Chancellor Séguier, the doctor Honorat, the nicely named midwife Perronnette and a devoted gentleman, Saint-Mars. All take an oath never to reveal the birth of this child. 

The baby is first entrusted to Dame Perronnette who raises it until Saint-Mars receives from Mazarin the order to take him to his house in Burgundy and to give him an education worthy of his rank.

At the age of 21, Anne of Austria's son discovers the secret of his birth by finding, in the cassette of his tutor Saint-Mars, several letters from the Queen and Mazarin.

Immediately informed, Louis XIV and Mazarin decide to put the young man in prison and make him wear an iron mask because his resemblance to the King is too obvious.

Napoleon descending from the iron mask?

Under the Empire, we even invented descendants with an iron mask! When he was a prisoner in Sainte-Marguerite, the supposed twin of Louis XIV would have had a governor named Bonpard. This Bonpard had a lovely daughter with whom the prisoner is going to fall in love. We are going to marry them and the descendants of this legitimate union were then transported to Corsica where the name of Bonpart is transformed into Buonaparte then Bonaparte! A master stroke: Napoleon becomes a descendant of Louis XIII! The Emperor was informed of this legend. She must have made him laugh. In the Memorial of Saint Helena, he admits to having heard about it and tells: "The credulity of men is such, their love of the marvelous so strong that it does notwould not have been difficult to establish something of the sort for the multitude and that one would not have failed to find certain people in the Senate to sanction it, and probably those same who, later, hastened to degrade him as soon as they saw him in adversity. "

Alexandre Dumas seizes the iron mask

Obviously, the romantic period could only be interested in the fate of this prince condemned from his birth.

The first to pay homage to him is Alfred de Vigny.

In 1821, he wrote a long poem "the prison" on the twin of Louis XIV.

He tells of his misfortunes and his shattered fate to an old monk called to his deathbed. 

In 1831, Arnould and Fournier wrote "A double of Louis XIV" which met with great success.

This gave Victor Hugo the idea to write a piece in verse entitled "the twins" in 1839 but it will remain unfinished.

But the one who will magnify the legend of the iron mask is of course Alexandre Dumas in his book "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne".

A very long sequel to "Trois Mousquetaires" and "Vingt Ans après". 

This third opus tells the sumptuous and dissipated period of the first years of the personal reign of Louis XIV.

The time has passed.

D'Artagnan arrives at middle age.

He abandons the Musketeers to help Charles II to recover the throne of England.

After that, he will always be at the side of King Louis XIV.

The novel then becomes a chronicle which relates the loves of the king, the fall of Fouquet, the rise of Colbert and above all the claims of Aramis. 

This one, become general of the Jesuits, hatches a plot to substitute for Louis XIV his twin brother, the man in the iron mask who, for reasons of State, was held in secrecy.

Aramis wants to replace the impetuous young king with his more docile twin who will perhaps allow him to become pope.

It is again d'Artagnan who will save the situation. 

But if the book is entitled "the viscount of Bragelonne", it is indeed the story of this young man who is at the heart of the action. Bragelonne, son of Athos and the Duchess of Longueville, conceived during the Fronde, was brought up with Louise de La Vallière who will become the King's mistress. He is obviously unhappy and jealous and the height of the action is during the famous party given by Fouquet in his castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte for Louis XIV. 

The King is jealous of both the castle and the party! He gets rid of Fouquet. Bragelonne, overwhelmed with love for La Vallière, is jealous of the King. D'Artagnan will work so that Aramis does not succeed in his plot to replace the king with his twin. In short, nothing is going well with the Three Musketeers! Porthos will die in Belle-Ile while defending Fouquet, Athos will not be long in following him to the tomb, d'Artagnan, who has become Marshal of France, will be killed by a cannon shot. Only the perfidious Aramis will survive. 

As always, Dumas, from chapter to chapter, filled with verve and talent, is at the best of his romantic genius. The book rejuvenates the myth of the iron mask and gives it tremendous popularity. Of course, the cinema will also seize the iron mask from 1902. The last version with Leonardo di Caprio is not the best even if it was shot in Vaux-le-Vicomte. 

In 1962 Jean Marais played a very amusing d'Artagnan in "the iron mask" by director Henri Decoin on a scenario by Cecil Saint-Laurent.

A leaping film, like the writing of Alexandre Dumas.

This one said that "it is permissible to violate history on condition of giving it a child".

With "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" he succeeded once again.

He invents another child, but this time he's Louis XIV's twin!

What a panache!

Bibliographic resources:

Jean-Christian Petitfils, The Iron Mask, between history and legend (Perrin, 2003, Tempus 2004 reissue)

Jean-Christian Petitfils, The iron mask unmasked?

(The enigmas of the history of France, Perrin / Le Figaro Histoire, 2018)

"At the heart of History" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast

Author and presentation: Jean des Cars

Production: Timothée Magot

Director: Laurent Sirguy

Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier and Salomé Journo 

Graphic design: Karelle Villais