It began as a rumor bandied about in the court of King Louis XIV. In 1711, the Duchess of Lorraine, Elizabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans, a busybody sister-in-law of the king, wrote to her aunt, Sophia of the Palatinate, former Electress of Hanover, sharing a juicy bit of gossip concerning a secret prisoner of state that had been incarcerated at the Bastille for years. What made the story so titillating was the detail that the prisoner had been masked and was guarded at all times by musketeers who had been ordered to immediately kill the man if he ever attempted to unmask himself. Elizabeth-Charlotte speculated that the prisoner was an English nobleman who had been arrested as part of a plot against William III, but as the rumor passed on and the legend began to build, that part of it fell by the wayside. Among those to take up the rumor and add to it was Voltaire, who in 1738 began to claim that he had some knowledge of the prisoner, and that during visits to the Bastille had spoken at length with his captors. In Voltaire’s version, the prisoner had been made to wear a mask forged of iron for the intriguing reason that he looked so astonishingly similar to the king. Eventually, the myth grew to include some kinship beyond mere resemblance, suggesting that the iron-masked prisoner was indeed the identical twin of the king and thus a threat to his rule, a tale immortalized by the great novelist Alexandre Dumas. But long before Dumas made popular fiction of this legend, contemporary documents had begun to surface and efforts were made to uncover the truth behind this legend. These investigations would eventually reveal that the prisoner’s mask was not made of iron at all, and indeed, we would eventually be able to match a name to this figure… but surprisingly, this would not clear up the mystery surrounding him.

The first clues as to the identity of the man behind the mask came in 1769, when a Jesuit who had formerly served as the chaplain at the Bastille turned up the journal of the former second-in-command at the Bastille. An entry in said journal for September 18, 1698, spoke of the arrival of Bénigne d'Auvergne de Saint-Mars, the new governor of the Bastille, and of an old, masked prisoner he brought with him. Then in another entry five years later, the same officer recorded the death of that mystery prisoner, noting that during his imprisonment there he had been “always masked with…black velvet” and that he had been buried under the name “Marchiel.” Thus the detail of the iron mask was among the first fictions dispelled by primary source material, and the first clue to his identity revealed! The name Marchiel led to the first theory of the prisoner’s identity: Count Ercole Antonio Matthioli, an Italian minister to the Duke of Mantua. According to a 1687 Dutch article of uncertain authenticity that just happened to appear after the revelation of the name Marchiel, Matthioli had been kidnapped in 1679 by French authorities for some intrigue having to do with King Louis XIV’s acquisition of the city of Casale, and had been imprisoned under Saint-Mars’s care first at Pignerol and afterward at the island of Sainte-Marguerite. Proponents of the theory that Matthioli was the masked prisoner tracked down the parish death records of the masked man and discovered that the journal entry had misspelled the name as Marchiel, that it was actually “Marchioly,” which was indeed very close to Matthioli.

Historical reconstruction of the Bastille in 1420, via Wikimedia Commons

Historians pushing the Matthioli thesis eventually got hold of a wealth of primary source material in the form of correspondence between the masked prisoner’s custodian, Saint-Mars, and the marquee de Louvois, the war secretary, letters that discussed in detail how the prisoner was to be treated. Those in the Matthioli camp published much of this material, as it appeared to prove their claims that Matthioli had been imprisoned at Pignerol; however, it also proved to be the undoing of their thesis, as these letters showed that the man who would eventually be explicitly identified as the masked prisoner had been arrested and sent to Saint-Mars’s garrison at Pignerol in 1669, a decade before Matthioli’s supposed kidnapping. Furthermore, they showed that Matthioli had not been taken by Saint-Mars to his subsequent stations at Sainte-Marguerite island and the Bastille, as had the masked prisoner, and that Matthioli had actually died in 1694, almost a decade before the man in the velveteen mask had expired at the Bastille. And finally, this correspondence clearly provided a name that was far different from that under which the prisoner had been buried. The masked man had been called Eustache Dauger.

This name thereafter led historical detectives down another path. Eustache Dauger de Cavoye had been born into a prominent family, his father a captain of a musketeer company and his mother a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of France, Anne of Austria. Seeming to have disappeared from history after his military service, some 20th century historians came to the conclusion that the young man had settled into a depraved lifestyle and began trafficking in aphrodisiacs and so-called “inheritance powders,” a euphemism for poison, suggesting that he eventually found himself embroiled in the Affair of the Poisons, or the Chambre Ardent Affair. This was a massive scandal involving not only the widespread sale of poisons but also apparent devil worship ceremonies and infant sacrifice that involved King Louis XIV’s own mistress, an embarrassment that caused him to draw a veil of secrecy over the testimony and prosecution of those involved. Some historians went out on a limb suggesting the masked prisoner Eustache Dauger had been arrested for his part in this madness. To prove it, they pored over the surviving proceedings of the Chambre Ardent and indeed discovered a mention of a surgeon named d’Auger. However, this too, like the Matthioli thesis, failed to hold up under scrutiny, for other records showed that, though indeed this young man Eustache Dauger de Cavoye ended up in prison, he had not been secreted away at Pignerol but rather openly imprisoned at Saint-Lazare in 1668, where he would die in the 1680s.

What these theories failed to consider were the strange conditions of the masked man’s imprisonment, which the letters of war secretary Louvois and the jailer Saint-Mars make exceedingly clear. Why would there have to be so much secrecy surrounding the imprisonment of the Italian count Matthioli or the corrupt youth de Cavoye? That is the question that must be answered for any theory to hold water. Eustache Dauger appeared to be deemed a dangerous man for the secrets he held. And what’s more than that, he appears to have been not a nobleman or a well-bred bourgeoisie, but rather a lowly valet, a manservant.

Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, governor of the Pignerol prison, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1669, then Captain de Saint-Mars served as commander of the prison within the French outpost of Pignerol in the Italian Alps, or as the Italians call it, Pinerolo in Piedmont. His only prisoner there was a man also deemed to be dangerous for the secrets he held: Nicolas Fouquet, former Superintendent of Finance who had been very publicly tried for corruption and sentenced to perpetual exile. Therefore, it seems that Pignerol was the place where Louis XIV customarily sent prisoners he felt must at all costs be sequestered from any contact with the outside world. Thus it was likely no surprise when the war secretary Louvois wrote to Saint Mars about the imminent arrival of a prisoner who must be kept completely isolated, in a special cell that commanded no view of any area where people might pass, behind a number of locked doors so that no guards could hear him speak. Saint-Mars was to personally attend to Dauger’s physical needs and to advise the prisoner that if he were to ever speak of anything other than his basic necessities, he would be immediately killed. Another dangerous political prisoner, Saint-Mars might have assumed, but perhaps he was surprised then when Louvois informed him that Dauger was just a valet and therefore required few creature comforts in his accommodations.

The precautions taken against the revelation of whatever secrets this valet held were truly extraordinary. He appears to have been a rrested on secret orders and transported in hugger-mugger to the prison. He was only allowed to hear the mass said on Sundays for the other prisoner, Fouquet, if he were kept hidden away and precautions were taken to prevent him from speaking to anyone. A year after Louvois sent Dauger to Pignerol, he replaced the entire garrison, except for Saint-Mars and his staff, who remained the custodians of Fouquet and Dauger. In 1671, another political prisoner arrived, the count de Lauzun. Now with two noblemen in his charge, he had the unpleasant task of finding them valets, since apparently the nobility always required servants, even when in prison. Fouquet already had two valets, but when Lauzun required one, Saint-Mars asked the war secretary’s permission to simply have Eustache Dauger serve him, since Dauger had been a valet previous to his incarceration. Louvois forbade it, for fear that Dauger would by some indiscretion share the mysterious secret to which he was privy. Strangely, though, when one of Fouquet’s manservants died in 1674, the war secretary finally relented and said that Dauger could serve as a valet to the former Superintendent of Finance. Perhaps this seemed more acceptable, since Fouquet himself was feared to hold dangerous secrets and as he had been exiled for life, would never be able to share with anyone whatever further secrets he might learn from Dauger. Oddly, however, in 1679, the king relented in his strictness with Nicolas Fouquet and allowed him to have visits from his fellow prisoner, the count de Lauzun, and even to receive visits from his family. Before this, however, the war secretary wrote directly to Fouquet to receive assurances that Fouquet had learned nothing from Dauger of “what he knew” and “what he had seen…in his past life.” Whether or not Fouquet had admitted to learning Dauger’s secrets, he was permitted his visitations, provided that Dauger would never be present when anyone visited.

When Nicolas Fouquet died in 1680, Saint-Mars discovered something problematic. The former Superintendent of Finance and the count de Lauzun had somehow managed to open up a passage between their separate chambers, which meant that not only Fouquet’s other valet but also the count had likely been in private with Eustache Dauger and may have been told whatever secrets he held. In order to somehow mitigate this breach, Saint-Mars locked the two valets up in the lower tower and lied to Lauzun, telling the count that the valets had been freed. Eventually, the count de Lauzun himself would be freed and restored to his former position, but the “men of the lower tower” remained in Saint-Mars’s charge and would until their deaths, kept in the utmost secrecy and not allowed to speak with anyone, even each other. Saint-Mars took them along with him when he received command of another frontier fortress to the northwest, where Fouquet’s other valet—an innocent man whose only crime was to have been in the presence of men with secrets—eventually died in 1687. Thereafter, Saint-Mars took his last remaining charge, the mysterious Eustache Dauger, with him to Sainte-Marguerite when he was promoted to governor of the island. Yet his orders still stood that no one was to speak to or even see the face of this Eustache Dauger, so he had the prisoner transported in a covered sedan chair carried by eight porters, a sight that inspired many rumors in Sainte-Marguerite. Once installed in his cell, however, which adjoined Saint-Mars’s own chambers so that no one else would have access to the poor, aging valet, he was not seen again until Saint-Mars’s further promotion to the governorship of the Bastille, the famous fortress in Paris. This time, however, instead of drawing more attention to his prisoner with the sedan, he simply elected to cover his face with a mask of black velvet, and thus the legend was born.

So who was this Eustache Dauger? Was “Dauger” a false name? Or was the name under which he was buried, “Marchiel” or “Marchioly,” the false name? Was he indeed a mere valet? Whom, then, had he formerly served? And what possible secrets could this poor manservant have been privy to that might have warranted such extraordinary precautions? The Matthioli theory further collapses when one considers that Matthioli’s imprisonment by the French had been no real secret. And even if it had been, there would have been no clear reason to mask him, since he would not have been a recognizable figure. Furthermore, had it been necessary to treat his incarceration so secretively, why bury him under so similar a name? Then there is the detail that the war secretary, Louvois, had left the name of the prisoner blank until after his secretaries had transcribed his dictation, only writing the name Eustache Dauger onto the missives before sending them to Saint-Mars. This would indicate that Dauger was the prisoner’s true name, held as a privileged secret, while the name under which he had been buried was the pseudonym. And this Eustache Dauger would seem to have genuinely been a valet in his former life, since even Vouloi’s earliest letters referred to him as such. Otherwise, it would have been foolishness to have him serve Fouquet in the same capacity.

So we are left with the final questions of whose valet this Dauger actually was, and what secrets he might have harbored. Andrew Lang, writing in 1903, suggested based on the timing of his arrest that Dauger may have been the notorious valet of Roux de Marcilly, a theory that proves to be one of the only explanations with some legs. Therefore let us examine it. This version starts with the negotiations of a secret treaty. For years, Charles the II, King of England, and Louis XIV, who were closely related as first cousins, had sought a closer alliance between the respective countries. Eventually this turned into earnest negotiations for the so-called Secret Treaty of Dover, which would see English ships and soldiers furnished for France’s planned conquest of the Dutch Republic in exchange for Charles receiving a substantial secret pension, provided he publicly convert to Roman Catholicism and restore the church’s power in England. It was during these lofty dealings that a suspected plot came to light, masterminded by a French Huguenot, and therefore a Protestant naturally predisposed against such a consolidation of papist power. Little is actually known about this Huguenot, Roux de Marcilly. Through a series of letters, he appears to have plotted with Charles II himself to form a league of Protestant nations against France and Louis XIV, thereby stemming the spread of Roman Catholicism. There is some doubt about Charles II’s genuine involvement in this plot, whether he really was tempted to turn against his cousin, perhaps because he was loathe to convert as Louis’s secret treaty required him to do, or whether he was humoring Marcilly while informing on him to Louis. Either way, Louis had the plotter kidnapped in Switzerland and tortured in the Bastille. He was accused of plotting the assassination of Louis XIV, but no evidence for such a plot existed, so they trotted out an old rape charge that may have been trumped up and sentenced him to death by the Catherine wheel for that. So awful and painful a death was execution by the breaking wheel, which involved having one’s bones smashed one by one and being slowly bludgeoned to death, that in his cell, Marcilly attempted to end his own life by cutting himself with a piece of broken glass. However, his guards caught him and cauterized his self-inflicted wounds with hot pokers so that he would survive to be shattered on the wheel.

A depiction of torture victims being broken on the wheel, via Wikimedia Commons

As Lang outlines in his essays “The Valet’s Tragedy” and “The Valet’s Master,” during his torture, Roux de Marcilly gave up his own valet, a man named Martin, as a co-conspirator. On the surface of it, this may seem absurd. When being tortured, one is compelled to give a name, and what better name than your lowly manservant, about whose life you may care little? And besides, whatever part Marcilly’s valet may have had in these matters was likely only performed in service to Marcilly, so he could hardly be considered a real player. Nevertheless, French authorities do appear to have been concerned about what the valet knew. After tracking him down in England, they questioned him, and Martin insisted he knew nothing, expressing reticence about accompanying them back to France for fear that “he would be kept in prison to make him divulge what he did not know.” Thereafter, however, the valet appears to have coyly intimated that he knew very much, perhaps because he enjoyed the attention, or perhaps in order to mock the French authorities because he felt himself safe in England. Unfortunately, the French thereafter asked Charles to surrender the man to their custody, and if we accept Lang’s thesis, which works well chronologically with Eustache Dauger’s arrest in Dunkirk in 1669, Charles gave up the valet, who was somehow—and here things turn vague—taken to Dunkirk (perhaps by a kidnapping similar to his master’s?) where he was arrested and given the prison pseudonym Eustache Dauger. In this scenario, which I find the most compelling, Dauger’s secret had to do with the existence of the Secret Treaty, about which his master clearly had information, or perhaps had something to do with Charles II’s intrigues. Nevertheless, there remain problems. If these were his secrets, then after a few short years, they would have been valueless and posed no further danger. And why keep him under lock and key for so long when they might easily have had him killed as they had his master? And why the great pains taken to conceal his identity and face? And if Dauger was a pseudonym for Martin, then why bury him under a third name?

Some of these questions can be answered with the sad assertion that this valet was merely a victim of bureaucracy and paranoia. There may have been reason to lock him away at the time, and thereafter it was only the perpetual, dogged enforcement of old and obsolete orders that kept him in captivity. However, the consistent inquiries about the prisoner in letters between Louvois and Saint-Mars indicate that even many years after Dauger’s incarceration, the king, or at least his ministers, remained concerned about what secrets the man harbored. Another explanation may be that, after allowing Dauger to serve as Nicolas Fouquet’s valet while at Pignerol, there was the further concern that Dauger, as well as the other valet, knew Fouquet’s secrets. As the Superintendent of Finance, Fouquet had once been among the most powerful men in France. Many, including Fouquet himself, believed that Louis XIV would eventually grow bored with the affairs of state and appoint Fouquet Prime Minister to rule France while Louis devoted himself to pleasure. Indeed, during his frequent meetings to go over ledgers with Louis, Fouquet appears to have exaggerated certain difficulties in the financial management of the state, perhaps in an effort to further persuade the monarch that he would not want to deal with these matters himself. However, Louis had other ideas about his kingship, and he had others whispering in his ears about Fouquet’s use of crown monies, suggesting that the Superintendent of Finance lived far too lavish a lifestyle for his own fortune to allow and that he must have been making personal use of royal funds. Indeed, Fouquet had built himself an ostentatious estate, and one day, after throwing the king a grand party, Louis, angry at the grandiose display of wealth, decided on moving against Fouquet. After arranging his arrest, Louis had him charged with various complicated crimes amounting essentially to financial chicanery, or more precisely, malversation, or corruption of office. It was a sensational trial, and with Fouquet’s many connections and allies, he managed to avoid a death sentence. Evidence turned up papers that came to the king’s attention, revealing letters from great ladies that Fouquet had seduced and accounts of the many men who were indebted to Fouquet’s generosity. The fact of the matter was that so long as Fouquet was alive, he posed a threat to the crown, so Louis had him shunted off to perpetual exile and received regular reports about anything his jailer might discover of his secrets.

Portrait of Nicolas Fouquet, via Wikimedia Commons

Clearly then, the valet Eustache Dauger may have been a supremely unlucky commoner. Having served one master that had dangerous secrets, he was then, while in prison, made to serve another master who held great secrets. And therefore he could never be allowed to leave. But this is strange logic, when one breaks it down, for the count de Lauzun surely also had opportunity to learn both the secrets of Fouquet as well as whatever secrets Dauger held, having excavated a passage between his cell and Fouquet’s and essentially had a shared chamber with them for years. Yet he was allowed to return to society. And even accepting this narrative, we still have no good explanation for why his face had to be obscured, unless it be a non-explanation, such as Louvois was being overly cautious by ordering that precautions should be taken to ensure that no one lay eyes on him, or that, in saying none should see him, Louvois actually had only meant that he should not be permitted to signal to others or have visitors and Saint-Mars had merely misconstrued the instructions to mean his face could not be seen. This is the crux of the mystery, I think: the mask and its true purpose. And this is what has led to the wildest speculation and the most outlandish theories. For example, novelist Marcel Pagnol, in the 1960s, combined the old myth about Louis XIV’s twin brother with Andrew Lang’s thesis to claim that the valet Martin involved in the plot against Louis was actually James de la Cloche, and rather than being an illegitimate son of Charles the II as many believed, he was Louis’s twin. Thus the fiction lived on.

And in a remarkable connection to our last two episodes, there is the titillating theory that Fouquet’s secret was the same as Bérenger Saunière’s secret. After all, there is an argument to be made that Fouquet’s life had been saved by the Catholic agents of a secret society, the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, or Company of the Blessed Sacrament, with which he had been involved. Perhaps they, like the supposed Priory of Sion, served as custodians of the Rennes-le-Château secret. And how would Fouquet have become an initiate? Well, he once received a letter from his brother, who had spoken to the painter Nicolas Poussin. An odd passage of the letter cryptically states:

He and I discussed certain things, which I shall with ease be able to explain to you in detail — things which will give you, through Monsieur Poussin, advantages which even kings would have great pains to draw from him, and which, according to him, it is possible that nobody else will ever discover in the centuries to come. And what is more, these are things so difficult to discover that nothing now on this earth can prove of better fortune nor be their equal.

And so we return to the spiraling conspiracy theory of Rennes-le-Château, which has led some addle-pated mystics to conclude that, directed by Poussin’s painting, the secret Bérenger Saunière really found there was alchemical in nature, the Philosopher’s Stone, which of course could make one rich but could also make one immortal. Then Fouquet’s secret was rather more a mystical one as well, and perhaps, after all, he did not die when the records state he did, but rather lived on, eternally young, a fact that had to be hidden by a velvet mask, for Fouquet would indeed have been recognizable and the fact that he hadn’t aged would certainly cause a sensation…. But such musings should be taken for what they are: fantasy. Remember that the masked prisoner was described as old when he arrived at the Bastille, and he died within a few years. So all we are left with, after all, are some possible suspects based on circumstantial evidence… sometimes less than that: mere coincidence! In truth, it appears that only a handful of men in 17th century France knew the identity and story of the masked prisoner, and they appear to have taken the knowledge with them to their graves. Therefore, that flimsy mask of velvet may as well have been an iron lockbox, concealing forever the answer to a riddle that has enthralled the world ever since.

An anonymous 1789 print depicting The Man in the Iron Mask, via Wikimedia Commons

Works Cited

Martin, Ronald. “On the Trail of the Iron Mask: The State of the Question.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, vol. 19, 1992, pp. 89-98. Hathi Trust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015054071587;view=1up;seq=107.

Eustache Dauger, the Secret Prisoner in the Velveteen Mask (aka The Man in the Iron Mask)

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