The Man in the Iron Mask (French: L'Homme au Masque de Fer) (died November 1703) was a prisoner who was held in a number of jails, including the Bastille and the Chateau d'If, during the reign of Louis XIV of France. The identity of this man has been thoroughly discussed, mainly because no one ever saw his face which was hidden by a mask of black velvet cloth. Later retellings of the story have claimed that it was an iron mask.

In popular myth he is believed to have been the twin brother of Louis XIV, but there is little actual evidence for this.

What facts are known about this prisoner are based mainly on correspondence between his jailer and his superiors in Paris.

Arrest and Imprisonment

The first surviving records of the masked prisoner are from July 1, 1669, when Louis XIV's minister the Marquis de Louvois sent a prisoner to the care of Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, governor of the prison of Pignerol, then part of France.

According to Louvois' letter, the man's name was Eustache Dauger. Louvois instructed Saint-Mars to prepare a cell with multiple doors which were to prevent anyone from the outside listening in. Dauger was also to be told that if he spoke of anything other than his immediate needs he would be killed. Saint-Mars was to see Dauger only once a day in order to provide food and whatever else he needed. But, according to Louvois, the prisoner should not require much since he was "only a valet".

The first rumours of the prisoner's identity (as a Marshal of France) began to circulate at this point. According to many versions of the legend, the prisoner wore the mask at all times. It is more probable that he was masked only during transport — such as when he was taken from prison to prison — and when there were outside visitors to the jail.

The Masked Man Serves as a Valet

The prison at Pignerol, like the others that Dauger was later held at, was used for men who were considered an embarrassment to the state and usually only had about half-a-dozen prisoners at a time.

Saint-Mars' other prisoners at Pignerol included Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli (or Matthioli), an Italian diplomat who had been kidnapped and jailed for double-crossing the French over the purchase of the important fortress town of Casale on the Italian border. There was also Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle-Ile, a former government minister, Surindente de Finance, who had been jailed by Louis XIV on the charge of embezzlement; and the Marquis de Lauzun, who had married the Duchess of Montpensier, a cousin of the King, without the King's consent. Fouquet's cell was above that of Lauzun.

In his letters to Louvois, Saint-Mars describes Dauger as a quiet man, giving no trouble, "disposed to the will of God and to the King", compared to his other prisoners who were either always complaining, constantly trying to escape or simply mad.

Dauger was not always isolated from the other prisoners. Wealthy and important ones usually had man-servants: Fouquet for instance was served by a man called La Riviere. These servants, however, would become as much prisoners as their masters and it was thus difficult to find men willing to volunteer for such an occupation. Since La Riviere was often ill, Saint-Mars applied for permission for Dauger to act as servant for Fouquet. In 1675 Louvois gave permission for such an arrangement on condition that he was only to serve Fouquet while La Riviere was unavailable and that he was not to meet anyone else: for instance, if Fouquet and Lauzun were to meet, Dauger was not to be present.

The fact that the man in the mask served as a valet is an important one. Fouquet was never expected to be released, thus meeting Dauger was no great matter, but Lauzun was expected to be set free eventually and it would have been important not to have him spread rumours of Dauger's existence. Historians have also argued that 17th-century protocol made it unthinkable that a man of Royal blood would serve as a manservant — thus very much discrediting those suggestions that Dauger was in any way related to the King.

After Fouquet's death in 1680, Saint-Mars discovered a secret hole between Fouquet and Lauzun's cells. He was sure that they had communicated through this hole without supervision by him or his guards and thus that Lauzun must have been made aware of Dauger's existence. Louvois instructed Saint-Mars to move Lauzun to Fouquet's cell and to tell him that Dauger and La Riviere had been released. In fact they were held in another cell in another part of the prison, their presence there being highly secret,

Other Prisons

Lauzun was freed in 1681. Later that same year Saint-Mars was appointed governor of the prison fortress of Exiles (now Exilles in Italy). He went there, taking Dauger and La Riviere with him. La Riviere's death was reported in January 1687 and in May Saint-Mars and Dauger moved to the island of Sainte-Marguerite, one of the Lérins Islands.

It was during the journey to Sainte-Marguerite that rumours spread that the prisoner was wearing an iron mask. Again, he was placed in a cell with multiple doors.

On September 18, 1698, Saint-Mars took up his new post as governor of the Bastille prison in Paris, bringing the masked prisoner with him. He was placed in a solitary cell in the pre-furnished third chamber of the Bertaudiere tower. The prison's second-in-command, de Rosarges, was to feed him. Lieutenant du Junca, another officer of the Bastille, noted that the prisoner wore "a mask of black velvet".

In 1711, King Louis' sister-in-law, the Princess Palatine sent a letter to her aunt, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, stating that the prisoner had "two musketeers at his side to kill him if he removed his mask". She described him as very devout and that he was well treated and received everything he desired. It might be noted though that the prisoner had already been dead for eight years and that the Princess had not necessarily seen him for herself. She was quite likely reporting on rumors she had heard at court.

The prisoner died on November 19, 1703, and was buried the next day under the name of Marchioly. All his furniture and clothing were reportedly destroyed afterwards.

Interest

The fate of the mysterious prisoner — and the extent of apparent precautions his jailers took — created much interest and many legends. There are almost a hundred theories in existence and many books have been written about the case. Some were presented after the existence of the letters was widely known. Later commentators have still presented their own theories, possibly based on embellished versions of the original tale, mixed with details from stories of other famous contemporary prisoners, including the ones held at Pignerol at the same time as Dauger.

Theories about his identity made at the time included that he was a Marshal of France; or Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver Cromwell; or Francois de Vendôme, Duc de Beaufort. Later, many people such as Voltaire put forward other theories about the man in the mask.

The King's Relative

Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was a son of Mazarin and Anne of Austria and therefore an illegitimate older half-brother of King Louis XIV. How serious he was is hard to say. Alexandre Dumas used this theory in his book, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, but made the prisoner a twin brother. It is this book that has been adapted for the many film versions of the story, and also on the game show Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Hugh Ross Williamson  argues that the man in the iron mask was actually the father of Louis XIV. According to this theory, the 'miraculous' birth of Louis XIV in 1638, after Louis XIII had been estranged from his wife for over twenty years, implies that Louis XIII was not the father.

The suggestion is that the King's minister, Cardinal Richelieu, had arranged for a substitute, probably an illegitimate son or grandson of Henry IV, to become intimate with the Queen, and father an heir. At the time, the heir-apparent was Louis XIII's brother Gaston d'Orléans, who was also Richelieu's enemy. If Gaston became King, Richelieu would quite likely have lost both his job as minister and his head, so it was in his interests to thwart Gaston's ambitions. Louis XIII also hated Gaston and might thus have agreed to the scheme.

Supposedly the father then left for the New World, but in the 1660s returned to France with the aim of extorting money for keeping his secret, and was promptly imprisoned. This theory would explain both the secrecy surrounding the prisoner, whose true identity would have destroyed the legitimacy of Louis XIV had it been revealed, and (because of the King's respect for his own father) the comfort of the terms of his imprisonment.

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