The title “The Man in the Iron Mask” belongs to a novel by
Alexandre Dumas (1802-70). He based his story on a real event, namely the
incarceration for almost 34 years of a prisoner whose face was always
concealed. Who could the mysterious prisoner have been?
The bare facts
The story begins on 24th August 1669, with the
arrival of a prisoner at Pignerol prison (in what is now northern Italy but
under French control at the time). He was delivered in person by a minister of
King Louis XIV, but the document that was handed to the prison governor
contained some very unusual stipulations, namely:
“The prisoner must be closely guarded and be unable to
communicate by letter or any other means. He must be kept in complete isolation
so that his guards cannot hear him, and you will never listen to anything he
might wish to tell you, threatening to put him to death if he ever opens his
mouth to speak to you of anything other than his needs”.
There were occasions when the prisoner was transferred to
other prisons, including a move in 1687 to the Ile de Sainte-Marguerite (off
the south coast of France near Cannes), when he was transferred in a sealed
sedan chair with his face covered by a mask of black velvet.
In 1698 he was transferred to the Bastille in Paris, with instructions
that every precaution be taken to ensure that he was not seen by anyone. The
officer who was second-in-command at the Bastille later made it known that he
was not told who the prisoner was, it was not written down anywhere, and his
face was always masked.
The prison log recorded the man’s death in 1703, and that he
had always worn a black velvet mask which he was never allowed to remove, even
for eating or sleeping.
The mention that the mask was of iron, not velvet, came
courtesy of the writer Voltaire, who was a prisoner in the Bastille in 1717 and
heard stories from the jailers about their earlier mysterious prisoner.
Speculation about a royal twin
Alexander Dumas only wrote his novel in 1850, and clearly he
based it on what he had read. He used speculation, rumour and imagination to
concoct his tale, in which the mask followed the “iron” tradition begun by
Voltaire and the prisoner had become a twin brother of King Louis XIV.
The idea was that Louis had had an identical twin brother,
but his father (King Louis XIII) was concerned that the younger twin might come
to challenge his brother for the right to be the heir to the throne. He was
therefore removed from the royal household when very young and brought up as
the son of a French nobleman.
However, at some point after Louis had become king (which he
did in 1643 when still not five years old) the younger twin had seen a picture
of Louis and realised who he was. When this was reported to the king he took
the extraordinary step of having his brother incarcerated for the rest of his
life in the manner that has been described. At least, that is how Dumas
imagined things to have been.
Could this have happened?
If Louis had had a twin brother, is it at all likely that he
would have taken such action? Even if King Louis XIII had been afraid of
sibling rivalry to the extent that the younger twin would have challenged the
older for the throne, why must one assume that Louis XIV thought the same way?
Did he see his brother as a potential threat, even when he was established as
the most powerful ruler in Europe – which he was in 1669 after 26 years on the
throne?
Another question is whether Louis knew that he had a twin
and, if so, when did he know this? Was it only in 1669 when he was told that
his brother had recognised him from a portrait?
If the facts are as Dumas surmised, then Louis’s action does
make some sort of sense. Rivals to the throne would normally be dealt with more
severely and be done away with, either publicly or secretly, but when that
rival is one’s own twin brother, one can imagine that this would have gone
against the grain.
Under such circumstances, one can also see why it would be
important for the brother not to be recognised by anyone else, and for him not
to be allowed to communicate with anyone that he was indeed the king’s twin.
However, there are also huge problems with this scenario.
For one thing, there is absolutely no evidence that Louis ever had a twin
brother. Royal births were hardly secret
affairs (it was typical for the room in which a birth took place to be crowded
not only with doctors and midwives but also with high ranking people who would
witness the birth and thus confirm that the child was definitely the son or
daughter of the queen and not a smuggled-in substitute), and it is hard to
imagine that a second baby would have been overlooked or that everyone present
would have been sworn to secrecy and kept that secret for decades afterwards.
Then there is the question of why concealing the identity of
the prisoner was so important after 1669 but apparently less so before then. If
the twin brother had suddenly realised who he was when aged around 30, why had
nobody else noticed the similarity at some point before then? If, as Dumas
suggests, the twin had been brought up in a noble household, there must have
been plenty of people around who regularly saw the king and who would surely
have spotted the likeness. It also seems unlikely that anyone brought up in
such an environment (the supposed twin brother, for example) would not have
seen the king on many occasions, especially as Louis XIV was renowned for
maintaining a large court of aristocratic hangers-on and engaging in many
lavish ceremonies and functions in which all the nobility of France would have
played a part at one time or another.
For all these reasons, the notion that Louis had locked up
his twin brother and insisted that he always be masked does sound to be highly
unlikely.
In that case, who was the masked man?
More than sixty suggestions have been made as to who the man
in the mask (whether iron or velvet) might have been. These have included some
very well-known names such as the Duke of Monmouth (an illegitimate son of King
Charles II of Great Britain) and the French playwright Moliere. However, all
these candidates pose a particular problem, namely that it is known when they
died and it wasn’t in 1703.
Many of the suggestions have related to less well-known
people, such as French army officers and obscure aristocrats who fell from
favour. However, if the person was not of any great importance, why bother with
the charade of keeping them alive in such circumstances for such a long time?
My own theory
This may not be an original idea – highly unlikely! – but it
strikes me that there could be another reason why a prisoner was kept masked for
34 years. This was not so that they could not be identified but because their
face had become so disfigured that its sight would be too great a shock for any
observer, including the person himself should he happen to see himself in a
mirror.
A disease such as leprosy or necrotizing fasciitis (the
“flesh-eating bug”) might have had this effect. With little understanding of
the cause of the ailment it might have been assumed that the condition was
infectious and that the victim had to be kept as far away from human contact as
possible, such as in a secure prison.
If the person was of high birth – such as a member of the
royal family – they would have been allowed to live out their natural term of
life, however long that might have been. This might have applied, for example,
to an illegitimate son of the king. According to Voltaire’s account, passed to
him by prison officers, the man was finely dressed and an accomplished musician
who was clearly not treated in the manner that a dangerous criminal might have
been, so imprisonment for protection as opposed to punishment does sound at
least possible.
However, this is mere speculation, as is virtually every
other account of the case. Stories tend to grow in the telling, and Alexandre
Dumas wrote his novel some 150 years after the events in question, so there had
been plenty of time for growth! Nobody knows the answer to the conundrum, and
it is unlikely that anyone ever will.
© John Welford
