Louvois gave Saint-Mars the government of the îles de Lérins, the two islands off Cannes of which Sainte-Marguerite is the larger, on 8 January 1687, before he knew of the death, and the letter still speaks of "les prisonniers" in the plural (Iung, pp. 404–405). Saint-Mars's letter of 20 January is the first to speak of one man, and it proposes the covered chair from which the first rumour of a mask followed.
Je donnerai si bien mes ordres pour la garde de mon prisonnier, que je puis bien vous en répondre, Monseigneur, pour son entière sûreté, et même pour l'entretien que j'ai toujours empêché d'avoir avec mon lieutenant, à qui j'ai défendu de lui jamais parler, ce qui s'exécute ponctuellement. Si je le mène aux îles, je crois que la plus sûre voiture seroit une chaise, couverte de toile cirée, de manière qu'il auroit assez d'air sans que personne le pût voir, ni lui parler pendant la route, pas même mes soldats que je choisirois pour être proche de la chaise.
"I shall give such good orders for the guard of my prisoner that I can answer to you for his entire safety, and even for the conversation I have always prevented him from having with my lieutenant, whom I have forbidden ever to speak to him, which is punctually carried out. If I take him to the islands, I think the safest conveyance would be a chair covered with oilcloth, so that he would have enough air without anyone being able to see him or speak to him on the road, not even my soldiers, whom I would choose to be near the chair."
Louvois left the manner of transfer to him, "pourvu que vous en puissiez répondre" (end of January 1687; Iung, p. 406). On 16 March the King paid 5,026 livres for a prison and lodging on the island "pour rendre sûre la personne de votre prisonnier", and Saint-Mars was to leave immediately after Easter; on 23 March, recovering from a fever on the island, he promised to bring his prisoner "sans que personne le voie ni lui puisse parler" and not to let him hear mass until he was in the new cell with its adjoining chapel (Roux-Fazillac, p. 115). The journey took twelve days.
Je suis arrivé ici le 30 du mois passé. Je n'ai resté que douze jours en chemin, à cause que mon prisonnier étoit malade, à ce qu'il disoit n'avoir pas autant d'air qu'il l'auroit souhaité; je puis vous assurer, Monseigneur, que personne au monde ne l'a vu, et que la manière dont je l'ai gardé et conduit pendant toute ma route fait que chacun cherche à deviner qui peut être mon prisonnier. Le lit de mon prisonnier étoit si vieux, si rompu, que tout ce dont il se servoit, tant linge de table que meubles, qu'il ne valoit pas la peine d'apporter ici, l'on n'en a eu que treize écus. J'ai donné à huit porteurs qui m'ont apporté une chaise de Turin et mon prisonnier jusqu'ici, comptant ladite chaise 203 livres.
"I arrived here on the 30th of last month. I was only twelve days on the road, because my prisoner was ill, so he said, from not having as much air as he would have wished; I can assure you that no one in the world has seen him, and that the way I guarded and conducted him along my whole route makes everyone try to guess who my prisoner can be. My prisoner's bed was so old and broken, and everything he used, table linen and furniture, so little worth bringing here, that only thirteen écus were got for it. I gave eight porters who carried a chair from Turin and my prisoner as far as here, counting the chair, 203 livres."
What it fixes. The prisoner's belongings fetched thirteen écus. That is what a valet's furniture would fetch after eighteen years, and nothing in the sale suggests a prisoner of rank. The chair was closed and carried by relays of porters. Within four months a manuscript newsletter of 4 September 1687, kept with the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, a newsletter circulated in manuscript among the Jansenists, a rigorist Catholic party (Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms. 1477, fol. 396 v°, photographed on masque-de-fer.com) and attributed to Louis Fouquet, bishop of Agde and brother of the dead prisoner (first printed by Xavier Azéma, Un prélat janséniste, Louis Foucquet, 1963, p. 150; brought into the debate by Stanislas Brugnon at Cannes in 1987), reported that Saint-Mars had moved a state prisoner "enfermé dans une chaise à porteurs ayant un masque d'acier sur le visage", with orders to kill him if he said his name, and that "tous les gens que le public croit morts ne le sont pas". This newsletter is the first mention of a mask in the record, and it is a report in circulation rather than an order from the ministry.
On 8 January 1688 Saint-Mars reported that he had put "mon prisonnier quy est toujours valtudinaire à son ordinaire" in one of the two new cells, "grandes, belles et claires", and added: "Dans toute sette province l'on dit que le mien est monsieur de Baufort, et dautres dissent que cest le fis de feu Cronvel" (Iung, pp. 410–411, from the original then in private hands). The duc de Beaufort, a grandson of Henri IV lost in the fighting at Candia, in Crete, in June 1669, and a son of Oliver Cromwell were the guesses of Provence in 1688; the guess of a royal brother does not appear in the letters. He also sent an expense account for the prisoner without detail, "pour que personne par qui il passe puisse pénétrer autre chose que ce quils croyent".
After Louvois's death the letters thin out and change hands. Barbezieux's letter of 13 August 1691 on the "prisoner of twenty years" is quoted above. In January 1694 the lieutenant La Prade, who had kept the Pignerol donjon (the keep, where the state prisoners were held) since 1681, reported that "le plus ancien est mort et qu'il n'en sait pas le nom", and Barbezieux asked Saint-Mars to send the name in cipher (Iung, p. 90; Topin, p. 350 n.): the ministry could not itself say which prisoner had died. In March 1694, with Pignerol about to be handed back to the Duke of Savoy, the three remaining state prisoners of the donjon were sent one by one to the islands, Barbezieux writing on 26 February "Je ne vous en mande pas le nom, persuadé que vous le sçavez" and on 20 March "Vous sçavez qu'ils sont de plus de conséquence, au moins un, que ceux qui sont présentement aux îles" (Topin, pp. 340, 350). The "one" is Mattioli. On the reading of the next letter that every editor since Lair has given it, he died within a month.
J'ai reçu la lettre que vous avez pris la peine de m'écrire le 29 du mois passé; vous pouvez, suivant que vous le proposez, faire mettre dans la prison voûtée le valet du prisonnier qui est mort, observant de le faire garder aussi bien que les autres, sans communication de vive voix ni par écrit avec qui que ce soit.
"I have received the letter you took the trouble to write me on the 29th of last month; you may, as you propose, have the valet of the prisoner who has died put in the vaulted prison, taking care to have him guarded as well as the others, without communication by word or writing with anyone."
What it fixes. A prisoner with a valet died at the islands before 29 April 1694. Of all Saint-Mars's prisoners only Mattioli had a valet, brought with him at his arrest in 1679 and named with him in Barbezieux's letter of 27 December 1693 ("les nommés Mattioli et son homme"). Iung, Lair, Funck-Brentano in 1901 and Petitfils all draw the conclusion; Delort, Roux-Fazillac and Topin did not know the letter when they wrote for Mattioli.
On 6 January 1696 Saint-Mars described his daily routine for Barbezieux, and used for the first time in his own hand the phrase the ministers would use for the next two years: the first lieutenant to arrive "prend les clefs de la prison de mon ensien prisonnier par ou l'on commence, il ouvre les trois portes et entre dans la chambre du prisonnier quy luy remet honnestement les plats et assiettes"; the second lieutenant inspects everything that goes in or out "et voir s'il n'y a rien d'écrit sur les vaisselles"; the bed, the grilles, the privy and "fort souvent" the man himself are searched, "après luy avoir demandé fort sivilement s'il na pas besoin d'autre chose" (Iung, pp. 415–417). Barbezieux's letter of 17 November 1697 on "ce qu'a fait vostre ancien prisonnier" is quoted above. Then, in 1698, Saint-Mars was offered the Bastille.
Vous pouvez disposer toutes choses pour estre prest à partir lorsque je vous le manderay et amener avec vous en toute seureté vostre ancien prisonnier. […] [19 July] Le roy trouve bon que vous passiez des isles de Sainte-Marguerite pour venir à la Bastille avec vostre ancien prisonnier, prenant vos précautions pour empescher qu'il ne soit veu ny conneu de personne. […] [4 August] J'ai reçu la lettre que vous avez pris la peine de m'écrire le 24 du mois passé, par laquelle vous me marquez les précautions que vous devez prendre pour la conduite de votre prisonnier. J'en ai rendu compte au Roi, qui les a approuvées.
"You may arrange everything so as to be ready to leave when I tell you, and bring with you in all safety your old prisoner. […] The King approves that you leave the islands to come to the Bastille with your old prisoner, taking your precautions to prevent his being seen or known by anyone. […] I have received your letter of the 24th of last month, in which you set out the precautions you must take for the conduct of your prisoner. I have reported them to the King, who has approved them."
What it fixes. The Bastille prisoner is "vostre ancien prisonnier", the term Saint-Mars used in January 1696 and Barbezieux in November 1697. The precautions were Saint-Mars's own proposals, approved in general terms; the letter of 24 July that listed them is lost. If the mask was among the precautions listed in the lost letter of 24 July, the King's approval of 4 August 1698 is the only royal sanction of it in the record.
The one modern author who breaks the chain here is Stanislas Brugnon, the archivist whose Cannes paper of 1987 and privately printed Reconstitution du registre d'écrou des prisonniers de l'île Sainte-Marguerite (1992) supplied Petitfils with much of his Pignerol chronology. Brugnon held that the prisoner of 1687 died on the island in 1693 and never went to the Bastille. His evidence, as quoted by the Cannes public library, is the abbé Papon's Histoire générale de la Provence (1778): an officer of eighty-two at the Fort Royal, the fortress on Sainte-Marguerite, remembered that his father, "l'homme de confiance de Saint-Mars", had "été prendre le mort à l'heure de minuit dans la prison et l'avait porté sur ses épaules dans le lieu de la sépulture". Brugnon named the father as Jacques Souchon, a cadet of Saint-Mars's company, and dated the death to 1693.
The objection fails against the ministerial usage. Saint-Mars's "mon ensien prisonnier" of January 1696, Barbezieux's "vostre ancien prisonnier" of November 1697 and the three letters of summer 1698 are one continuous term for one man, and a man who had died in 1693 could not be "your old prisoner" in 1697; Barbezieux's letter of 13 August 1691 had already fixed which prisoner the precautions concerned. Papon's midnight burial, if it records an actual event, fits Mattioli, who on that reading died on the island in April 1694 and whose burial no letter records. Petitfils, who used Brugnon's papers through his widow, did not follow him on this point. The probability that the 1698 Bastille prisoner was the man carried from Exilles in 1687 is put here at 93 per cent, the residue covering Brugnon's reading and the possibility that one of the Pignerol prisoners of 1694 was the "ancien prisonnier qu'il avait à Pignerol" of du Junca's entry.
Saint-Mars left the islands at the end of August 1698 with his nephew Formanoir, the sergeant Rosarges and the turnkey Antoine Ru, went up the Rhône, and, according to the Gazette d'Amsterdam, a French-language newspaper printed in Holland, of 3 October, "a fait mettre un prisonnier qu'il avait amené avec lui, et il en a laissé un autre à Pierre-Cise, en passant à Lyon" (Iung, p. 422), Pierre-Cise being the state prison above Lyon. The second prisoner is the subject of Bernard Caire's article "Chi era il prigioniero di Pierre-Scise?" (1998), which Petitfils cites for a reimbursement order showing that another prisoner travelled with him; neither article was consulted. The entry register of the Bastille, kept by du Junca, records the arrival.
Du judy 18me de septembre 1698, à trois heures après midy, Monsieur de St-Mars gouverneur du chateau de la bastille est arivé pour sa première entrée venant de son gouvernement des illes St-Marguerite honorat aient mené avec queluy dans sa litière un ensien prisonnier qu'il avet à pignerol lequel il fait tenir touiours masqué dont le nom ne se dit pas et l'aient fait mettre en de sendant de sa litière dans la première chambre de la tour de la basinnière en atandant la nuit pour le mettre et mener moy mesme a neuf heures du soir avec M. de rosarges un des sergens que monsieur le gouverneur a mené dans la troisième chambre seul de la tour de la Bretaudière que j'aves fait meubler de touttes choses quelques jours avent son arivée en aient reseu l'hordre de Monsieur de St-Mars lequel prisonnier sera servy et soigné par Mr de rosarge que monsieur le Gouverneur norira.
"Thursday 18 September 1698, at three in the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastille, arrived for his first entry, coming from his government of the islands of Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat, having brought with him in his litter an old prisoner he had at Pignerol, whom he keeps always masked, whose name is not said, and had him put, on getting down from his litter, in the first chamber of the Basinière tower to wait for night, so that I might put and lead him myself at nine in the evening, with M. de Rosarges, one of the sergeants the governor brought, into the third chamber, alone, of the Bertaudière tower, which I had had furnished with everything some days before his arrival, having received the order from M. de Saint-Mars; which prisoner will be served and looked after by M. de Rosarges, whom the governor will feed."
Variants. Delort printed "dans sa diligence" for "dans sa litière"; Loiseleur read "troisième chambre sud" for "seul" and built a note on it; Topin's folio number differs from Funck-Brentano's and from the "Dujonca, volume 37" cited by Chevalier, a later major of the Bastille. None affects the sense.
On 3 November 1698 Pontchartrain, who had charge of the Bastille as secretary of state for the King's household, allowed "votre prisonnier de Provence" to confess and take communion as often as Saint-Mars judged fit (Topin, p. 356; Iung, p. 423). Iung inferred that the mask was for the walk across the courtyard to mass, which is what the Bastille tradition later said. On 30 April 1701 du Junca put a new prisoner "en compagnie avec Tirmont, dans la seconde chambre de la tour de la Bretaudière, avec l'ancien prisonnier, tous les deux bien renfermés" (Ravaisson, X, p. 369): the old prisoner had moved down a floor and, on Ravaisson's reading, shared the tower but not the room. The Bastille of 1698 to 1703 had between twenty and forty prisoners, and du Junca's register shows the practice of false names at burial for others besides this one (the suicide Dupressoir-Louvart was buried in June 1702 "sous le nom de Pierre Massuque").
Du mesme jour lundi 19me de novembre 1703, le prisonnier inconeu touiours masqué d'un masque de velours noir que Monsieur de St-Mars gouverneur a mené avecque luy en venant des illes St-Marguerite qu'il gardet depuis lontamps lequel s'etant trouvé hier un peu mal en sortant de la messe il est mort cejourd'huy sur les dix hures du soir sans avoir eu unne grende maladie il ne se put pas moins. M. Giraut nottre homonier le confessa hier surpris de sa mort il na point reseu les sacremens et notre homonier la exorté un momant avend que de mourir et se prisonnier inconeu gardé depuis si lontamps a esté entéré le mardy a quattre hures de la pres-midy 20me novembre dans le semetiere St-Paul nottre paroisse sur le registre mortuer on a doné un nom ausy inconeu que monsieur de rosarges maior et Mr Reil sieurgien qui hont signé sur le registre. — je apris du depuis qu'on l'avet nomé sur le registre M. de Marchiel que on a paié 40 l. d'anterement.
"The same day, Monday 19 November 1703, the unknown prisoner, always masked with a mask of black velvet, whom M. de Saint-Mars the governor brought with him coming from the islands of Sainte-Marguerite, whom he had guarded for a long time, who, having felt a little unwell yesterday on coming out of mass, died today about ten in the evening without having had a great illness; it could not have been less. M. Giraut our chaplain confessed him yesterday; surprised by death, he did not receive the sacraments, and our chaplain exhorted him a moment before he died; and this unknown prisoner, guarded for so long, was buried on Tuesday 20 November at four in the afternoon in the cemetery of Saint-Paul, our parish; on the death register a name as unknown was given, which M. de Rosarges, major, and M. Reil, surgeon, signed. [In the margin:] I learned since that he had been named on the register M. de Marchiel; that 40 livres were paid for the burial."
The Saint-Paul register was destroyed in the fires of the Commune in 1871; a facsimile published in Topin's fifth edition (1878) reads, in Funck-Brentano's transcription (1894, p. 296): "Le 19e, Marchioly, âgé de quarante-cinq ans ou environ, est décédé dans la bastille, duquel le corps a esté inhumé dans le cimetière de st Paul, sa paroisse, le 20me du présent, en présence de monsieur Rosage, majeur de la bastille, et de Mr Reglhe, chirurgien majeur de la bastille, qui ont signés. Rosarges, Reilhe." Earlier readers from Griffet to Lair had read the name as Marchialy or Marchiali. Two later readers corrected them: the critic Paul de Saint-Victor first read Marchioly, and Pierre Bertrand connected it to Saint-Mars's habitual spelling "Marthioly" for Mattioli. The age was supplied by Bastille officers who had known the prisoner for five years without seeing his face. Everything else about the death, the burning of the furniture, the scraping of the walls, the drugs in the coffin, comes from Griffet in 1769 reporting the garrison's memory, from the major Chevalier's sheet printed in 1789, and from a letter of 1768 by Formanoir de Palteau, Saint-Mars's great-nephew; no document of 1703 records any of it.
Twenty candidates have been proposed since 1745. The table tests each against the seven fixed points; the names in brackets after each candidate are the authors who proposed him, with the year. "Fail" means a document places the man elsewhere, free, or dead at that date; "open" means the documents do not decide; "n/a" means the point does not apply. A short script generates the table from a candidate file published with this case, so anyone who disagrees with a cell can change the file and rerun it.
| Candidate (principal proponents) | a 1669 | b 1675 | c 1680 | d 1681 | e 1687 | f 1698 | g 1703 | Decisive document |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The valet of 1669, "Eustache Dauger" (Lair 1890; Lang 1903; Laloy 1913; Mongrédien 1952; Petitfils 1970, 2003; Noone 1988; Sonnino 2016; Wilkinson 2021) | pass | pass | pass | pass | open | pass | open (age) | Louvois 19 July 1669; 8 April 1680; Saint-Mars 25 June 1681; Barbezieux 13 Aug. 1691, 17 Nov. 1697; du Junca 1698, 1703 |
| La Rivière, Fouquet's valet (no author; the only alternative survivor of 1687) | fail | n/a | pass | pass | open | open | open | Louvois 8 April 1680, 16 April 1684; Barbezieux 13 Aug. 1691 |
| Ercole Antonio Mattioli (Heiss 1770; Roux-Fazillac 1801; Delort 1825; Topin 1869; Funck-Brentano 1894) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | name fits, age 62 | Saint-Mars 25 June 1681; Barbezieux 10 May 1694 |
| The Jacobin, a Dominican friar arrested in 1674 (Topin 1883 for the 1691 letter; Iung and Delort for the 1687 death) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | open | Louvois 8 April 1680; Barbezieux Jan. 1694 |
| Eustache Dauger de Cavoye, a disgraced nobleman of the same name held at Saint-Lazare in Paris from 1668 (Duvivier 1932; Furneaux 1954; Thompson 1987) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail (66) | His letters from Saint-Lazare, 20 June 1678 and c. 1679 (Mongrédien 1953); Louis XIV 17 Aug. 1678 |
| Vivien Labbé de Bulonde, the general who raised the siege of Cuneo in 1691 (the cryptographer Étienne Bazeries and Émile Burgaud 1893) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | The marquis de Dangeau's court journal, 11 Dec. 1691; receipt of 28 Nov. 1705 and death 1709 (shown by the archivist Louis Batiffol, 1894) |
| Nicolas Fouquet himself, his death of 1680 being a fiction (pamphlet 1789; Lacroix 1836; Arrèse 1970; Dabos 2025) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail (88) | Louvois 8 April 1680; burial register of the Visitation Sainte-Marie convent, Paris, 28 March 1681 (Lair II, 472–474) |
| The Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, executed in London in July 1685 (Saint-Foix 1768) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | The dispatches of Barrillon, the French ambassador in London, June to July 1685 |
| The comte de Vermandois, Louis XIV's son by Louise de La Vallière, born 1667 (anon. 1745; Griffet 1769) | fail (aged 2) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | The letters of the marshal d'Humières and of Boufflers reporting his death at Courtrai, Nov. 1683 |
| The duc de Beaufort, lost at Candia in 1669 (Lagrange-Chancel 1759; the Provence rumour of 1688) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail (87) | Brodart's report of his loss at Candia, 27 June 1669; "un valet" |
| A twin or elder brother of Louis XIV (Voltaire 1771; the abbé Soulavie 1790; Alexandre Dumas; Marcel Pagnol 1965) | fail | fail | open | open | open | open | fail (65) | "un valet"; the 1675 service; birth records of 1638 |
| James de la Cloche, who presented himself at Rome in 1668 as a natural son of Charles II (Carey 1904; Barnes 1908) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | The Naples will and death, Aug. 1669 (Laloy pp. 35–37) |
| The abbé Prignani, an Italian astrologer sent to Charles II's court in 1669 (Barnes 1908) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | In Rome 1675–78; death 1678/9 (Laloy p. 101) |
| Molière, the playwright (Loquin 1883; Diamant-Berger 1971) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | The register of La Grange, the actor of his company, recording his death, 17 Feb. 1673 |
| Avedick, the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople whom the French abducted in 1706 (Taulès 1825) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | In Constantinople until 1706 (Topin pp. 168–170) |
| Henri II de Lorraine, duc de Guise (Bartoli 1978, 2012) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | Died 1664 |
| The "unknown of Provence", Kéroualze (Ravaisson 1879) | fail | open | open | open | open | open | fail | Louvois 26 March 1670 ("le major de Dunkerque"); Laffilard's register |
| Louis de Oldendorf, arrested 1673 (Iung 1873) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | open | Louvois 8 April 1680; Laloy pp. 122–127 |
| D'Artagnan, the captain of musketeers (Macdonald 2005) | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | fail | Killed at Maastricht, 25 June 1673 |
| Martin, valet of the Huguenot conspirator Roux de Marsilly, who was executed in Paris in June 1669 (Lang 1903) | fail | open | open | open | open | open | open | Colbert de Croissy, the French ambassador in London, 1 July 1669; Lionne, the foreign minister, 13 July 1669 (Laloy pp. 285–287) |
Table 1. Twenty candidates against the seven fixed points. Made for this report from the candidate file and the documents cited in each row.
Only the valet of 1669 passes every documented point. Two candidates deserve a word because they were once the consensus or still have an argument.
Mattioli was the identification of the war archives themselves in the nineteenth century, from Roux-Fazillac in 1801 to Funck-Brentano's article of 1894, and it rests on the burial name, which is strong, and on a misreading by Delort of the letter of 9 June 1681. The strong point is the burial name: a clerk who had to write something wrote a name three letters from "Marthioly", the spelling Saint-Mars used for Mattioli, and Funck-Brentano called that discovery the "victoire décisive". The misreading is Delort's use of the sentence about Mattioli's clothes in the letter of 9 June 1681 to send him to Exilles, which Saint-Mars's own letter of 25 June contradicts. Against the name stand the documented facts that Mattioli was arrested in May 1679, held openly under his own name in the Catinat letters, beaten with a stick and denied a physician (Louvois, 15 and 22 May 1679), left at Pignerol in 1681, moved to the islands only in March 1694, and dead there with his valet before 29 April 1694. Why the Bastille chose his name for the register is not known. The likeliest answer is the one Lair gave: the name was in the Pignerol papers Saint-Mars carried with him, and a Mantuan diplomat was as good a false identity as any. The probability that the masked man was Mattioli is put at 3 per cent, a weight that reflects the burial name set against six failed fixed points.
The royal twin is the popular candidate and the only one that cannot be tested against a document, because no document records him. He fails on the only ground available: the man of 1669 was "un valet" whose furniture was to be cheap, whom Saint-Mars offered as a servant to Lauzun in 1672, who served Fouquet from 1675 to 1680, whose bed was sold for thirteen écus in 1687, and whose clothes had to last three or four years "à ces sortes de gens-là". Sarah Madry (2016) has argued that "valet" in the letter of 19 July 1669 is a pun on the jack of spades and on Louvois's rival Louis d'Auger de Cavoye, and that Louvois knew nothing of the prisoner; the argument does not reach the six later letters that treat the man as a servant.