The Prisoner from Provence, by Tighe Hopkins

The Fort Royal on Île Sainte-Marguerite in the Sea of Provence. The masked prisoner was kept here before moving with his warden, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, to the Bastille in 1698. Tighe (pronounced ‘teeg’) Hopkins believed that our man was an Italian diplomat, Ercole Antonio Mattioli, who had caused a sensation across Europe when he tried to cash in on Louis XIV’s secret deal to buy the fort at Casale Monferrato from Charles IV, Duke of Mantua. Many have agreed with him, though the more romantic prefer the speculations of Voltaire, who in 1764 cast Saint-Mars’s ‘ancient prisoner’ as Louis XIV’s illegitimate son, and of Alexandre Dumas, who in 1847-50 made him Louis’s twin brother, taken to Fort Royal by d’Artagnan and clamped with a grisly iron mask.

The Prisoner from Provence

❰

1 2 3

❱

The unhappy man was already a mystery,* before even he had set foot within the prison which was to be the third and last of his long captivity.* No one knew him, who he was or what he had done that Saint-Mars should have him in this extraordinary keeping. Together, Gaoler and Mask, they had traversed France from far Provence, travelling always in this secure fashion, by silent ways.*

At the chateau and domain of Palteau,* a property of Saint-Mars, a halt had been made; and the peasants of the estate who came out to meet their lord preserved and passed on as a tradition the memory of that strange visit. The mask, once seen, seems to have haunted the dullest fancy. In itself it was no way remarkable; a little black velvet mask: what affected the mind was the circumstance that the person who wore it was a prisoner. This was something entirely unwonted. The peasants observed that when the table was served the prisoner was always kept with his back to the window, they noted the pistols at the hand of the vigilant Saint-Mars, and the two beds ranged together in the sleeping-room.

❰

1 2 3

❱

* The historical records indicate that the masked prisoner in the Bastille must be one of two closely-guarded men. One was a scandal-plagued Italian diplomat named Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli (1640-?). In 1676, Mattioli had been employed by Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, to sell Casale Monferrato (near Turin) to Louis, but after receiving generous kickbacks from Louis he leaked the deal to Spain. Mattioli was snatched by Louis’s men on May 2nd, 1679, masked up, and taken to Pignerol under the name Lestang. The other candidate was a valet who had been given the alias Eustache Dauger on his arrival at Pignerol in August 1669, and whose identity was such a secret that Saint-Mars threatened to run him through if he spoke a word out of turn. Wild rumours spread about Dauger — he was a marshal of the army, or a parliamentary president, he was the Duc de Beaufort, he was Oliver Cromwell’s son — rumours Saint-Mars did nothing to discourage.

* Mattioli was moved from Pignerol to Île Sainte-Marguerite in Provence in 1694, and (if he was the man in the mask) then to the Bastille in 1698, making three prisons in all. Unlike Mattioli, Dauger went with Saint-Mars to the Fort at Exilles near Turin in 1681, and duly accompanied him to Provence in 1687, so if he was the man in the Bastille he had been at four prisons, not three.

* When Eustache Dauger was transported from the Fort at Exilles to Provence in 1687, he travelled in the same furtive manner; indeed, he almost suffocated in the carriage owing to the oil-cloths thrown over it.

* A country house belonging to Saint-Mars’s grand-nephew at Villeneuve-le-Roi, about 8½ miles south of the centre of Paris.

Précis

The journey to Paris was conducted in the utmost secrecy, but a brief halt at Villeneuve-le-Roi afforded the villagers a glimpse of Saint-Mars’s prisoner. His face was always turned away, but they did see that Saint-Mars kept two guns by him at all times, and that he did not leave his prisoner’s side even at night.

Clay Lane The Copybook

Donate

Buy Me a Coffee is a crowdfunding website, used by over a million people. It is designed to help content creators like me make a living from their work. ‘Buy Me a Coffee’ prides itself on its security, and there is no need to register.