Man in the Iron Mask

The Man in the Iron Mask (French: L'Homme au Masque de Fer; died 19 November 1703) was an unidentified prisoner of state during the reign of Louis XIV of France (1643–1715). The strict measures taken to keep his imprisonment secret resulted in a long-lasting legend about his identity. Warranted for arrest on 19 July 1669 under the name of "Eustache Dauger", he was apprehended near Calais on 28 July, incarcerated on 24 August, and held for 34 years in the custody of the same jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, in four successive French prisons, including the Bastille. When he died there on 19 November 1703, his inhumation certificate bore the name of "Marchioly", leading several historians to conclude the prisoner was Italian diplomat Ercole Antonio Mattioli.
His true identity remains a mystery, even though it has been extensively debated by historians, and various theories have been expounded in numerous books, articles, poems, plays, and films. During his lifetime, it was rumoured that he was a Marshal of France or a President of Parlement; the Duke of Beaufort, or a son of Oliver Cromwell, and some of these rumours were initiated by Saint-Mars himself. Among the oldest theories is one proposed by French philosopher and writer Voltaire, who claimed in his Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771) that the prisoner was an older, illegitimate brother of Louis XIV. Other writers similarly believed he was the King's twin or younger brother. In all, more than 50 candidates, real and hypothetical, have been proposed by historians and other authors aiming to solve the mystery.
What little is known about the prisoner is based on contemporary documents uncovered during the 19th century, mainly some of the correspondence between Saint-Mars and his superiors in Paris, initially Louvois, Louis XIV's secretary of state for war. These documents show that the prisoner was labelled "only a valet" and that he was jailed for "what he was employed to do" before his arrest. Legend has it that no one ever saw his face, as it was hidden by a mask of black velvet cloth, later misreported by Voltaire as an iron mask. Official documents reveal, however, that the prisoner was made to cover his face only when travelling between prisons after 1687, or when going to prayers within the Bastille in the final years of his incarceration; modern historians believe the latter measure was imposed by Saint-Mars solely to increase his own prestige, thus causing persistent rumours to circulate about this seemingly important prisoner.
In 1932, French historian Maurice Duvivier proposed that the prisoner was Eustache Dauger de Cavoye, a nobleman associated with several political scandals of the late 17th century. This solution, however, was disproved in 1953 when previously unpublished family letters were discovered by another French historian, Georges Mongrédien, who concluded that the enigma remained unsolved owing to the lack of reliable historical documents about the prisoner's identity and the cause of his long incarceration.
He has been the subject of many works of fiction, most prominently in 1850 by Alexandre Dumas. A section of his novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later—the final installment of his D'Artagnan saga—features this prisoner, portrayed as Louis XIV's identical twin and forced to wear an iron mask. In 1840, Dumas had first presented a review of the popular theories about the prisoner extant in his time in the chapter "L'homme au masque de fer", published in the eighth volume of his non-fiction Crimes Célèbres. This approach was adopted by many subsequent authors, and speculative works have continued to appear on the subject.
The earliest surviving records of the masked prisoner are from 19 July 1669, when Louis XIV's minister, the Marquis de Louvois, sent a letter to Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, governor of the prison of Pignerol (which at the time was part of France). In his letter, Louvois informed Saint-Mars that a prisoner named "Eustache Dauger" was due to arrive in the next month or so.
He instructed Saint-Mars to prepare a cell with multiple doors, one closing upon the other, which were to prevent anyone from the outside listening in. Saint-Mars was to see Dauger only once a day to provide food and whatever else he needed. Dauger was to be told that if he ever spoke of anything other than his immediate needs he would be killed, but, according to Louvois, the prisoner should not require much since he was "only a valet". Historians have noted that the name Eustache Dauger was written in a handwriting different from that used in the rest of the letter's text, suggesting that a clerk wrote the letter under Louvois' dictation, while someone else, very likely Louvois, added the name afterward.
Dauger was arrested by Captain Alexandre de Vauroy, garrison commander of Dunkerque, on 28 July and taken to Pignerol, where he arrived on 24 August. Evidence has been produced to suggest that the arrest was actually made in Calais and that not even the local governor was informed of the event—Vauroy's absence being explained away by his hunting for Spanish soldiers who had strayed into France via the Spanish Netherlands. The first rumours of the prisoner's identity (specifically as a Marshal of France) began to circulate at this point.
The prison at Pignerol, like the others at which Dauger was later held, was used for men who were considered an embarrassment to the state and usually held only a handful of prisoners at a time. Saint-Mars's other prisoners at Pignerol included Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, 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 Mantuan border. There was Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle-Île, a former superintendent of finances who had been jailed by Louis XIV on the charge of embezzlement, and the Marquis de Lauzun, who had become engaged to 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 always complaining, constantly trying to escape, or simply mad.
Dauger was not always isolated from the other prisoners. Wealthy and important ones usually had manservants; Fouquet, for instance, was served by a man called La Rivière. These servants, however, would become as much prisoners as their masters and it was thus difficult to find people willing to volunteer for such an occupation. Because La Rivière 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 to serve Fouquet only while La Rivière 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. 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 or of secrets he might have known. The important fact that Dauger served as a valet to Fouquet strongly indicates he was born a commoner.
On 23 November 1678, Louvois wrote directly to Fouquet to inform him that the King was disposed to soften considerably the strictures of his incarceration, subject to Fouquet writing back to Louvois—without informing Saint-Mars of the contents of his reply—concerning whether or not Dauger had talked to him, Fouquet, in front of La Rivière, "about what he was employed to do before being brought to Pignerol". From this revealing letter, French historian Mongrédien concluded that Louvois was clearly anxious that any details about Dauger's former employment should not leak out if the King decided to relax the conditions of Fouquet's or Lauzun's incarceration.
After Fouquet's death on 23 March 1680, Saint-Mars discovered a secret hole between Fouquet and Lauzun's cells. He was sure that they had communicated through this hole without detection by him or his guards and thus that Lauzun must have been made aware of Dauger's existence. On 8 April 1680, Louvois therefore wrote to Saint-Mars and instructed him to move Lauzun to Fouquet's cell and to tell him that Dauger and La Rivière had been released, after secretly relocating them to a new cell in the lower tower of Pignerol's dungeon. They became henceforth identified in official correspondence only as "the two gentlemen of the lower tower" ("les messieurs de la tour d'en bas"). After La Rivière died in early 1687, Dauger continued to be referred to as "La Tour" by prison staff and as the "old prisoner" ("l'ancien prisonnier") in correspondence.
Lauzun was freed in 1681. Later that same year, Saint-Mars was appointed governor of the prison of the Exiles Fort (now Exilles in Italy). He went there, taking Dauger and La Rivière with him. La Rivière's death was reported in January 1687; in May, Saint-Mars and Dauger moved to Sainte-Marguerite, one of the Lérins Islands, half a mile offshore from Cannes. 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 18 September 1698, Saint-Mars took up his new post as governor of the Bastille prison in Paris, bringing Dauger with him. He was placed in a solitary cell in the prefurnished third chamber of the Bertaudière 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". The masked prisoner died there on 19 November 1703 and was buried the next day under the name of "Marchioly".
In the third edition (2004) of his book on the subject, French historian Jean-Christian Petitfils collated a list of 52 candidates, real or imagined, whose names had been either mentioned as rumours in contemporary documents, or proposed in printed works, between 1669 and 1992.
A week after Dauger's arrival at Pignerol, Saint-Mars wrote to Louvois (31 August 1669), reporting that the prisoner was rumoured to be a "Marshall of France or President of Parlement". Eight months later, Saint-Mars informed Louvois (12 April 1670) that he initiated some of these rumours himself, when asked about the prisoner: "I tell them tall tales to make fun of them."
A few months after Dauger was relocated to his new prison cell at the Île Sainte-Marguerite Fort in January 1687, Saint-Mars wrote to Louvois about the latest rumours (3 May 1687): "Everyone tries to guess who my prisoner might be." On 4 September 1687, the Nouvelles Écclésiastiques published a letter by Nicolas Fouquet's brother Louis, quoting a statement made by Saint-Mars: "All the people that one believes dead are not", a hint that the prisoner was the Duke of Beaufort. Four months later, Saint-Mars reiterated this "rumour" in writing to Louvois (8 January 1688), adding: "(...) others say that he is a son of the late Cromwell".
On 10 October 1711, King Louis XIV's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte, 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 stated that he was well treated and received everything he desired. In another letter sent less than two weeks later, on 22 October, she added having just learnt that he was "an English milord connected with the affair of the Duke of Berwick against King William III." The Princess was clearly reporting rumours she had heard at court.
Some of the most enduring theories about the prisoner's identity, outlined in the sections below, assume that he was a relative of Louis XIV, because of the importance attached to secrecy during his incarceration which, in turn, fed the legend that he must have been one of the most important persons in the realm. These theories emerged during the 1700s, long before historians were able to consult the archives revealing that the prisoner was "only a valet", imprisoned for "what he was employed to do", and for "what he knew". These early theories arose solely from their author's imagination, and boosted the romantic appeal of a sensational elucidation of the enigma. Historians such as Mongrédien (1952) and Noone (1988), however, pointed out that the solution whereby Louis XIV is supposed to have had an illegitimate brother—whether older, twin, or younger—does not provide a credible explanation, for example, on how it would have been possible for Queen Anne of Austria to conceal a pregnancy throughout its full course and bear, then deliver, a child in secret. Mongrédien concluded that "historians cannot give it the slightest credence."
In 1745, an anonymous writer published a book in Amsterdam, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de la Perse, romanticising life at the French Court in the form of Persian history. Members of the royal family and locations were given fictitious Persian names, and their key was published in the book's third edition (1759). In this tale, Louis XIV's illegitimate son, Louis, Count of Vermandois, is alleged to have struck his half-brother, Louis, Grand Dauphin, causing the King to banish him to life imprisonment, first at the Île Sainte-Marguerite and later at the Bastille. He was made to wear a mask whenever he was to be seen or attended to, when sick or in other circumstances. The theory of Vermandois as the prisoner in the mask was later mentioned by Henri Griffet, in 1769, as having circulated during the reign of Louis XIV, therefore long before 1745.
In reality, there are no historical records of gossip confirming that Vermandois ever struck the Grand Dauphin. In the memoirs of Louis XIV's first cousin, the Duchess of Montpensier, there is mention of Vermandois having displeased the King for taking part in orgies in 1682, and being temporarily banished from court as a result. After promising to mend his way, he was sent—soon after his 16th birthday—to join the army in Courtrai during the War of the Reunions (1683–84), in early November 1683. He distinguished himself in the battle line, but died of a fever during the night of 17 November. The King was reported to be deeply affected by his son's death, and Vermandois' sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon, was inconsolable while their mother, Louise de La Vallière, sought solace in endless prayer at her Carmelites convent in Paris.
During his two sojourns in the Bastille in 1717–18 and 1726, Voltaire became aware of the traditions and legends circulating among the staff at the fortress. On 30 October 1738, he wrote to the Abbé Dubos: "I am somewhat knowledgeable about the adventure of the Man in the Iron Mask, who died at the Bastille; I spoke to people who had served him." In the second edition of his Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771), Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was an illegitimate first son of Anne of Austria and an unknown father, and therefore an older half-brother of Louis XIV. This assertion was partly based on the historical fact that the birth of Louis XIV on 5 September 1638 had come as a surprise: since Louis XIII and Anne of Austria had been childless for 23 years, it was believed they were unable to conceive, despite evidence to the contrary of the Queen's well-known miscarriages. In fact, the royal couple had been living for years in mutual distrust and had become estranged since the mid-1620s. Furthermore, in August 1637, the Queen had been found guilty of treasonable correspondence with Spain and had been placed under house arrest at the Louvre Palace. However, contemporary accounts nonetheless indicate that the royal couple shared a bed and conceived the future Louis XIV, either in early December 1637 or, as historians deem more likely, sometime during the previous month. The Queen's pregnancy was made public on 30 January 1638.
Based on the assumption that the royal couple were unable to conceive, Voltaire theorised that an earlier, secret birth of an illegitimate child persuaded the Queen that she was not infertile, in turn prompting Cardinal Richelieu to arrange an outing during which the royal couple had to share a bed, which led to the birth of Louis XIV.
The theme of an imagined elder brother of Louis XIV resurfaced in 1790, when French historian Pierre-Hubert Charpentier asserted that the prisoner was an illegitimate son of Anne of Austria and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, supposedly born in 1626, two years before the latter's death. Louis XIV was presumed to have had this elder brother imprisoned upon the Queen's death in 1666. According to Charpentier, this theory had originated with a certain Mademoiselle de Saint-Quentin, a mistress of the Marquess of Barbezieux, son of Louvois and his successor as War Minister to Louis XIV in 1691. A few days before his sudden death on 5 January 1701, Barbezieux had told her the secret of the prisoner's identity, which she disclosed publicly to several people in Chartres towards the end of her life in the mid-1700s. Charpentier also stated that Voltaire had heard this version in Geneva, but chose to omit Buckingham's name when he began to develop his own variant of this theory in the first edition of The Age of Louis XIV (1751), finally revealed in full in Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771).
Many authors supported the theory of the prisoner being a twin brother of King Louis XIV: Michel de Cubières (1789), Jean-Louis Soulavie (1791), Las Cases (1816), Victor Hugo (1839), Alexandre Dumas (1840), Paul Lecointe (1847), and others.
In a 1965 essay, Le Masque de fer (revised in 1973 under the title Le secret du Masque de Fer), French novelist and playwright Marcel Pagnol, proposing his hypothesis in particular on the circumstances of Louis XIV's birth, claimed that the Man in the Iron Mask was indeed a twin brother, but born second, who would have been hidden in order to avoid any dispute over the throne holder. At the time, there was a controversy over which one of twins was the elder: the one born first, or the one born second, who was then thought to have been conceived first.
Historians who reject this hypothesis (including Jean-Christian Petitfils) highlight the conditions of childbirth for the queen: it usually took place in the presence of multiple witnesses—the main court's figures. According to Pagnol, immediately after the birth of the future Louis XIV at 11 a.m. on 5 September 1638, Louis XIII took his whole court (about 40 people) to the Château de Saint-Germain's chapel to celebrate a Te Deum in great pomp, contrary to the common practice of celebrating it several days before childbirth. Pagnol contends that the court's removal to this Te Deum had been rushed to enable the queen to deliver the second twin in secret and attended only by the midwife.
Pagnol's solution—combining earlier theories by Soulavie (1790), Andrew Lang (1903), Arthur Barnes (1908), and Edith Carey (1924)—speculates that this twin was born a few hours after Louis XIV and grew up on the Island of Jersey under the name James de la Cloche, believing himself to be an illegitimate son of Charles II. During a hypothetical, secret meeting in January 1669, Charles is assumed to have recognised the twin for his resemblance to the French king and revealed to him his true identity. Shortly thereafter, the twin would supposedly have adopted the new identity of "Martin" as a valet to Roux de Marcilly, with whom he conspired against Louis XIV, which led to his arrest in Calais in July 1669. Historically, however, the real valet Martin (distinct from Pagnol's reinterpreted "Martin") could not have become "Eustache Dauger" because he had fled to London when the Roux conspiracy failed; this is well known because his extradition from England to France had at first been requested by Foreign Minister Hugues de Lionne on 12 June 1669, but subsequently cancelled by him on 13 July. Pagnol explained this historical fact away by claiming, without any evidence, that "Martin" must have been secretly abducted in London in early July and transported to France on 7 or 8 July, and that the extradition order had therefore been cancelled because it was no longer necessary, its objective having already been achieved.
In 1791, Jean Baptiste De Saint-Mihiel proposed that the prisoner was an illegitimate younger brother of Louis XIV, fathered by Cardinal Mazarin. This theory was based on the fact, mentioned by Voltaire in Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771), that the prisoner had told his doctor that he "believed himself to be about 60 years old", a few days before his death in 1703. De Saint-Mihiel extrapolated that the prisoner was therefore born around 1643, and could therefore only be a younger brother to the King, born in 1638. It is a historical fact that, four days after Louis XIII's death on 14 May 1643, the Queen was declared Regent and appointed Mazarin as her chief minister and head of government that evening. Mazarin was soon believed to be her lover, and even her secret morganatic husband. The theory of the prisoner being an imagined, younger son of the Queen and Mazarin was rekindled in 1868 by Charles-Henri, baron de Gleichen.
In 1955, Hugh Ross Williamson argued that the Man in the Iron Mask was the natural father of Louis XIV. According to this theory, the "miraculous" birth of Louis XIV in 1638 would have come after Louis XIII had been estranged from his wife Anne of Austria for 14 years.
The theory then suggests that Cardinal Richelieu had arranged for a substitute, probably an illegitimate grandson of Henry IV, to become intimate with the queen and father an heir in the king's stead. At the time, the heir presumptive was Louis XIII's brother Gaston, Duke of Orléans, who was Richelieu's enemy. If Gaston became king, Richelieu would quite likely have lost both his job as minister and his life, and so it was in his best interests to thwart Gaston's ambitions.
Supposedly, the substitute father then left for the Americas but returned to France in the 1660s with the aim of extorting money for keeping his secret and was promptly imprisoned. This theory would explain the secrecy surrounding the prisoner, whose true identity would have destroyed the legitimacy of Louis XIV's claim to the throne had it been revealed.
This theory had been suggested by British politician Hugh Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood, who nonetheless added that the idea has no historical basis and is entirely hypothetical. Williamson held that: "to say it is a guess with no solid historical basis is merely to say that it is like every other theory on the matter, although it makes more sense than any of the other theories. There is no known evidence that is incompatible with it, even the age of the prisoner, which Cecil had considered a weak point; and it explains every aspect of the mystery." His time spent as a valet to another prisoner renders this idea doubtful, however.
Another candidate, much favoured in the 1800s, was Fouquet's fellow prisoner Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli (a.k.a. Matthioli). He was an Italian diplomat who acted on behalf of the debt-ridden Charles IV, Duke of Mantua in 1678, in selling Casale, a strategic fortified town near the border with France. A French occupation would be unpopular, so discretion was essential, but Mattioli leaked the details to France's Spanish enemies after pocketing his commission once the sale had been concluded, and they made a bid of their own before the French forces could occupy the town. Mattioli was kidnapped by the French and thrown into nearby Pignerol in April 1679. The French took possession of Casale two years later.
George Agar-Ellis reached the conclusion that Mattioli was the Man in the Iron Mask when he reviewed documents extracted from French archives in the 1820s. His book, published in English in 1826, was translated into French and published in 1830. German historian Wilhelm Broecking came to the same conclusion independently seventy years later. Robert Chambers' Book of Days supports the claim and places Matthioli in the Bastille for the last 13 years of his life. Since that time, letters sent by Saint-Mars, which earlier historians missed, indicate that Mattioli was held only at Pignerol and Sainte-Marguerite and was not at Exilles or the Bastille and, therefore, it is argued that he can be discounted.
In 1890, Louis Gendron, a French military historian, came across some coded letters and passed them on to Étienne Bazeries in the French Army's cryptographic department. After three years, Bazeries managed to read some messages in the Great Cipher of Louis XIV. One of them referred to a prisoner and identified him as General Vivien de Bulonde. One of the letters written by Louvois made specific reference to de Bulonde's crime.
At the Siege of Cuneo in 1691, Bulonde was concerned about enemy troops arriving from Austria and ordered a hasty withdrawal, leaving behind his munitions and wounded men. Louis XIV was furious and in another of the letters specifically ordered him "to be conducted to the fortress at Pignerol where he will be locked in a cell and under guard at night, and permitted to walk the battlements during the day with a 330 309." It has been suggested that the 330 stood for masque and the 309 for full stop. However, in 17th-century French avec un masque would mean "in a mask".
Some believe that the evidence of the letters means that there is now little need for an alternative explanation of the man in the mask. Other sources, however, claim that Bulonde's arrest was no secret and was actually published in a newspaper at the time. Bulonde was released by order of the king on 11 December 1691. His death is also recorded as happening in 1709, six years after that of the man in the mask.
In 1908, Monsignor Arthur Barnes proposed that the prisoner was James de la Cloche, the alleged illegitimate son of the reluctant Protestant Charles II of England, who would have been his father's secret intermediary with the Catholic court of France. One of Charles's confirmed illegitimate sons, the Duke of Monmouth, has also been proposed as the man in the mask. A Protestant, he led a rebellion against his uncle, the Catholic King James II. The rebellion failed and Monmouth was executed in 1685. However, in 1768, a writer named Saint-Foix claimed that another man was executed in his place and that Monmouth became the masked prisoner, it being in Louis XIV's interests to assist a fellow Catholic like James, who would not necessarily want to kill his own nephew. Saint-Foix's case was based on unsubstantiated rumours and allegations that Monmouth's execution was faked.
In his letter to Saint-Mars announcing the imminent arrival of the prisoner who would become the Man in the Iron Mask, Louvois gave his name as "Eustache Dauger". Historically, this was deemed to be a prison pseudonym, and a succession of historians therefore attempted to find out the prisoner's real identity. Among them, Maurice Duvivier (1932) wondered if, instead, "Eustache Dauger" might not be the real name of a person whose life and history could be traced; he therefore combed the archives for surnames such as Dauger, Daugers, d'Auger, d'Oger, d'Ogiers and similar forms. He discovered the family of François d'Oger de Cavoye, a captain of Cardinal Richelieu's guard of musketeers, who was married to Marie de Sérignan, a lady-in-waiting at the court of Louis XIV's mother, Queen Anne of Austria. François and Marie had 11 children, of whom six boys and three girls survived into adulthood.
Their third son was named Eustache, who signed his name as "Eustache Dauger de Cavoye". He was born on 30 August 1637 and baptised on 18 February 1639. When his father and two eldest brothers were killed in battle, Eustache became the nominal head of the family. In his 1932 book, Duvivier published evidence that this man had been involved in scandalous and embarrassing events, first in 1659, then again in 1665, and speculated that he had also been linked with l'Affaire des Poisons.
In April 1659, Eustache Dauger de Cavoye and others were invited by the duke of Vivonne to an Easter weekend party at the castle of Roissy-en-Brie. By all accounts, it was a debauched affair of merry-making, with the men involved in all sorts of sordid activities, including attacking an elderly man who claimed to be Cardinal Mazarin's attorney. It was also rumoured, among other things, that a black mass was enacted and that a pig was baptised as "Carp" in order to allow them to eat pork on Good Friday.
When news of these events became public, an inquiry was held and the various perpetrators jailed or exiled. There is no record as to what happened to Dauger de Cavoye but, in 1665, near the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he allegedly killed a young page boy in a drunken brawl involving the Duc de Foix. The two men claimed that they had been provoked by the boy, who was drunk, but the fact that the killing took place close to where Louis XIV was staying at the time meant that this crime was deemed a personal affront to the king and, as a result, Dauger de Cavoye was forced to resign his commission. His mother died shortly afterwards. In her will, written a year earlier, she passed over her eldest surviving sons Eustache and Armand, leaving the bulk of the estate to their younger brother Louis. Eustache was restricted in the amount of money to which he had access, having built up considerable debts, and left with barely enough for "food and upkeep".
In his 1932 book, Duvivier also linked Eustache Dauger de Cavoye to the Affair of the Poisons, a notorious scandal of 1677–1682 in which people in high places were accused of being involved in black mass and poisonings. An investigation had been launched, but Louis XIV instigated a cover-up when it appeared that his mistress Madame de Montespan was involved. The records show that, during the inquiry, the investigators were told about a surgeon named Auger, who had supplied poisons for a black mass that took place before March 1668. Duvivier became convinced that Dauger de Cavoye, disinherited and short of money, had become Auger, the supplier of poisons, and subsequently "Eustache Dauger".
In a letter sent by Louvois to Saint-Mars on 10 July 1680, a few months after Fouquet's death in prison while "Eustache Dauger" was acting as his valet, the minister adds a note in his own handwriting, asking how it was possible that Dauger had made certain objects found in Fouquet's pockets—which Saint-Mars had mentioned in a previous correspondence, now lost—and "how he got the drugs necessary to do so". Duvivier suggested that Dauger had poisoned Fouquet as part of a complex power struggle between Louvois and his rival Colbert.
In 1953, however, French historian Georges Mongrédien published historical documents confirming that, in 1668, Eustache Dauger de Cavoye was already held at the Prison Saint-Lazare in Paris—an asylum, run by monks, which many families used in order to imprison their "black sheep"—and that he was still there in 1680, at the same time that "Eustache Dauger", was in custody in Pignerol, hundreds of miles away in the south. These documents include a letter dated 20 June 1678, full of self-pity, sent by Dauger de Cavoye to his sister, the Marquise de Fabrègues, in which he complains about his treatment in prison, where he had already been held "for more than 10 years", and how he was deceived by their brother Louis and by Clérac, their brother-in-law and the manager of Louis's estate.
Dauger de Cavoye also wrote a second letter, this time to the King but undated, outlining the same complaints and requesting his freedom. The best the King would do, however, was to send a letter to the head of Saint-Lazare on 17 August 1678, telling him that "M. de Cavoye should have communication with no one at all, not even with his sister, unless in your presence or in the presence of one of the priests of the mission". The letter was signed by the King and Colbert. A poem written by Louis-Henri de Loménie de Brienne, an inmate in Saint-Lazare at the time, indicates that Eustache Dauger de Cavoye died as a result of heavy drinking in the late 1680s. Historians consider all this proof enough that he was not involved in any way with the man in the mask.
In 1890, French historian Jules Lair published an extensive, two-volume biography of Nicolas Fouquet in which he relates Eustache Dauger's arrival at Pignerol in August 1669, his subsequent role as Fouquet's valet, and their secret interactions with Lauzun. Lair believed that "Eustache Dauger" was the new prisoner's real name, that he was French, catholic and a professional valet who had been employed for a specific task which was never clarified: "he was probably one of these men tasked with a shady mission—such as the removal of documents or kidnapping, or perhaps worse—and whose silence is secured by death or imprisonment once the deed is done." Lair also conjectured an explanation for Louvois's obsessive insistence that Dauger and Lauzun should be kept apart at all times, by reference to the fact that Dauger was arrested near Dunkirk during the negotiations of the Secret Treaty of Dover, in which Lauzun had also participated. Lair asserted that the two men knew each other or, at the very least, had been aware of each other.
In 2016, American historian Paul Sonnino speculated that Eustache Dauger could have been a valet of Cardinal Mazarin's treasurer, Antoine-Hercule Picon. A native of Languedoc, Picon, upon entering the service of Colbert after Mazarin's death, might have picked up a valet from Senlis, where the name "Dauger" abounds. In his book, Sonnino asserts that Mazarin led a double life, "one as a statesman, the other as a loan shark", and that one of the clients he embezzled was Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles I of England. According to Sonnino's theory, Louis XIV was complicit and instructed his ambassador in England to stonewall Charles II over the return of his parents' possessions. In 1669, however, Louis wanted to enlist Charles in a war against the Dutch and therefore worried about the subject of Mazarin's estate entering into the negotiations. Sonnino concludes by stating that Eustache Dauger, who might have been Picon's valet, was arrested and incarcerated for revealing something about the disposition of Mazarin's fortune, and that this is why he was threatened with death if he disclosed anything about his past.
In 2021, British historian Josephine Wilkinson mentioned the theory proposed by French historian Bernard Caire in 1987, whereby "Eustache" was not the prisoner's first name but his real surname. Since French historian Jean-Christian Petitfils had earlier asserted that "Dauger" was a misspelling of "Danger" (or d'Angers), Caire suggested that this appellation was used to indicate the prisoner originated from the town of Angers. Wilkinson also supported the theory proposed by Petitfils—and by Jules Lair in 1890—that, as a valet (perhaps to Henrietta of England), this "Eustache" had committed some indiscretion which risked compromising the relations between Louis XIV and Charles II at a sensitive time during the negotiations of the Secret Treaty of Dover against the Dutch Republic. In July 1669, Louis had suddenly and inexplicably fallen out with Henrietta and, since the two had previously been very close, it did not go unnoticed. Wilkinson therefore suggested a link between this event and this valet's arrest in Calais later that month.
When the Bastille was stormed on 14 July 1789, the mob were surprised to find only seven prisoners, as well as a room full of neatly kept boxes containing documents that had been carefully filed since 1659. These archives held records, not only of all the prisoners who had been incarcerated there, but also of all the individuals who had been locked up, banished into exile, or simply tried within the limits of Paris as a result of a lettre de cachet. Throughout the 18th century, archivists had been working zealously at keeping these records in good order and which, on the eve of the French revolution, had amounted to hundreds of thousands of documents.
As the fortress was being ransacked, the pillaging lasted for two days during which documents were burned, torn, thrown from the top of towers into the moats and trailed through the mud. Many documents were stolen, or taken away by collectors, writers, lawyers, and even by Pierre Lubrowski, an attaché in the Russian embassy—who sold them to emperor Alexander I in 1805, when they were deposited at the Hermitage Palace—and many ended up dispersed throughout France and the rest of Europe. A company of soldiers was posted on 15 July to guard the fortress and, in particular, to prevent any more looting of the archives. On 16 July, the Electoral Assembly created a commission assigned to rescue the archives; on arrival at the fortress, they found that many boxes had been emptied or destroyed, leaving an enormous pile of papers in a complete state of disorder. During the session of 24 July, the Electoral Assembly passed a resolution enjoining citizens to return documents to the Hôtel de Ville; restitutions were numerous and the surviving documents eventually stored at the city's library, then located at the convent of Saint-Louis-de-la-Culture.
On 22 April 1797, Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon was appointed chief librarian of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal and obtained a decree that secured the Bastille archive under his care. However, the librarians were so daunted by this volume of 600,000 documents that they stored them in a backroom, where they languished for over forty years. In 1840, François Ravaisson found a mass of old papers under the floor in his kitchen at the Arsenal library and realised he had rediscovered the archives of the Bastille, which required a further fifty years of laborious restoration; the documents were numbered, and a catalogue was compiled and published as the 20th century was about to dawn. Eventually, the archives of the Bastille were made available for consultation by any visitor to the Arsenal library, in rooms specially fitted up for them.
In addition to the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, several other archives host historical documents that were consulted by historians researching the enigma of the Man in the Iron Mask: the Archives of the Foreign Ministry (Archives des Affaires étrangères), the Archives Nationales, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Sainte-Geneviève Library, and the Service Historique de la Défense (a.k.a. Anciennes Archives de la Guerre).
In his historical essay published in 1965 and expanded in 1973, Marcel Pagnol praised a number of historians who consulted the archives with the goal of elucidating the enigma of the Man in the Iron Mask: Joseph Delort (1789–1847), Marius Topin (1838–1895), Théodore Iung (1833–1896), Maurice Duvivier (18??–1936), and Georges Mongrédien (1901–1980). Along with Pierre Roux-Fazillac (1746–1833), François Ravaisson (1811–1884), Jules Loiseleur (1816–1900), Jules Lair (1836–1907), and Frantz Funck-Brentano (1862–1947), these historians uncovered and published the bulk of historical documents that enabled some progress to be made towards that goal.
In particular, Mongrédien was the first to publish (1952) a complete reference of historical documents on which previous authors had relied only selectively. He was also one of the few historians who did not champion any particular candidate, preferring instead to review and analyse objectively the facts revealed by all the documents. Giving full credit to Jules Lair for being the first to propose the candidacy of "Eustache Dauger" in 1890, Mongrédien demonstrated that, among all the state prisoners who were ever in the care of Saint-Mars, only the one arrested under that name in 1669 could have died in the Bastille in 1703, and was therefore the only possible candidate for the man in the mask. Although he also pointed out that no documents had yet been found that revealed either the real identity of this prisoner or the cause of his long incarceration, Mongrédien's work was significant in that it made it possible to eliminate all the candidates whose vital dates, or life circumstances for the period of 1669–1703, were already known to modern historians.
In October 1965, Mongrédien published a review, in the journal La Revue des Deux Mondes, of the first edition of Pagnol's essay. At the end of this review, Mongrédien mentioned being told that the Archives of the Ministry of Defense located at the Château de Vincennes still held unsorted and uncatalogued bundles of Louvois's correspondence. He speculated that, if this were the case, then these bundles might contain a letter from July 1669 revealing the reasons for "Eustache Dauger"'s arrest near Dunkirk.
In addition to being the subject of scholarly research carried out by historians, the Man in the Iron Mask inspired literary works of fiction, many of which elaborate on the legend of the prisoner being a twin brother of Louis XIV, such as Alexandre Dumas's popular novel, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1850).
Several films have been made around the mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask, including: The Iron Mask (1929) starring Douglas Fairbanks; The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) starting Louis Hayward; the British television production starring Richard Chamberlain (1977); and the American film starring Leonardo DiCaprio (1998). These films were all loosely adapted from Dumas' book The Vicomte de Bragelonne, where the prisoner was an identical twin of Louis XIV and made to wear an iron mask, per the legend created by Voltaire.
In the Japanese Manga Berserk (1989), one of the protagonists, Griffith, was imprisoned, tortured, and forced to wear an iron mask. He becomes an antagonist shortly thereafter. In the Japanese manga One Piece (1997), one of the protagonists, Sanji, was imprisoned during childhood and forced to wear an iron mask, resembling the story of the French prisoner.
In the second season of the television show The Flash in 2014, the Man in the Iron Mask is held hostage by Hunter Zolomon/Zoom, who pretends to be the superhero Flash. The Man in the Iron Mask is eventually revealed to be the real Jay Garrick of his universe, and a doppelganger of Henry Allen, Barry Allen/The Flash's father.
The Man in the Iron Mask is portrayed as the Duc de Sullun (inversion of nullus, Latin for 'no one') in the first two episodes of the third season of the TV drama series Versailles (2018). In the program, he is visited in the Bastille by Philippe I, Duke of Orléans on his search to find men to send to the Americas and is revealed to be the secret biological father of Louis XIV and Philippe I due to the inability of Louis XIII to produce an heir.
In "What If... the Avengers Assembled in 1602?", the eighth episode of the second season (2023) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney+ series What If...?, the Man in the Iron Mask is a variant of Bruce Banner, who is freed by Captain Peggy Carter, breaking the iron mask after transforming into the Hulk.