Note 336 — Chapter XV

It is needless to say that I have put on one side the numerous opinions which are not worthy of being discussed, simply because they do not rest upon a pretext even. There was a period (that of the public disputes between Fréron, Saint-Foix, Lagrange-Chancel, Father Griffet, and Voltaire) when to imagine a solution of this problem was in fashion, and people suggested a name without troubling themselves with the proofs, or at least with the motives which might render this name probable. It is in this manner that two-and-twenty so-styled solutions have been put forward. I have discussed those which concern the brothers of Louis XIV. (son of Buckingham and Anne of Austria, son of Anne of Austria and an unknown person, son of Anne of Austria and Louis XIII., born some hours after Louis XIV.) I have subsequently refuted the Vermandois solution, and the Monmouth, Beaufort, and Avedick. I shall content myself with simply mentioning the opinions which make the Man with the Iron Mask a natural and adulterine son of Marie-Louise d’Orléans, wife of Charles II., King of Spain; a natural and adulterine son of Marie-Anne de Neubourg, second wife of Charles II., King of Spain, who would have been put out of the way by Louis XIV.; a natural son of the Duchess Henriette d’Orléans and Louis XIV.; a natural son of the same Princess and the Count de Guiche; a natural son of Marie-Thèrese, wife of Louis XIV. and of the negro servant whom she had brought with her from Spain; a son of Christine of Sweden and of her Grand Equerry Monaldeschi; a son of Cromwell; a lover of Louise d’Orléans, imprisoned when she became Queen of Spain; a woman; a pupil of the Jesuits incarcerated for an abusive distich, and sent to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite. All these opinions have, as may be seen, very little weight.

Lastly, it is proper to name the Chevalier Louis de Rohan, Master of the Hounds, condemned to death in 1674, as a conspirator, and who, according to one theory, had his life spared. M. Pierre Clément, in the work which he has devoted to this individual (Enguerrand de Marigny, Beaune de Semblançay, le Chevalier de Rohan, épisodes de l’Histoire de France), and in chapter vi. of his curious volume, La Police sous Louis XIV., has clearly established that the Chevalier de Rohan was beheaded. He was executed with his accomplices in front of the Bastille, November 27, 1674. The execution was public, and it was impossible to have substituted any one else. It was not because no effort was made to move the heart of Louis XIV.; but Louvois was always on the watch, and in this instance thought it desirable to renew the severities of Richelieu. Even supposing it were possible to prove that Louis XIV. had spared the life of this conspirator, it would also be necessary to prove that he was the Man with the Iron Mask, and not merely by showing the probabilities and indicating the possibilities. Such a process, indeed, sufficed in the last century to build up a theory; but historical criticism in our own times is rightly more exacting. It is essential now-a-days to establish the perfect conformity between the Chevalier de Rohan and the Man with the Iron Mask, by following the former from prison to prison, from the time that his life is said to have been spared until his death in 1703. But this is utterly impossible. One prisoner only was brought to Saint-Mars in 1674, but on April 18, long before the Chevalier’s trial: this prisoner was an insignificant and obscure monk. Now we are acquainted with all the prisoners confided to Saint-Mars since that time, we know the causes of their imprisonment, and there is no doubt, moreover, that he had no others. Numerous despatches attest this fact, and it has been established and recognized since a long time. The only doubtful point is which of Saint-Mars’ prisoners was the Man with the Iron Mask. But not one of them has, in his existence, his age, the manner in which he was treated, the time at which he was incarcerated, any feature which resembles the Chevalier de Rohan even in conjecture. See, besides the two volumes mentioned: Imperial Archives, Manuscript Registers of the Secretary’s office of the King’s Household, year 1674, pp. 133, 165, 184. Archives of the Ministry of War, letter from Louvois to the King, October 6, 1674. Mémoires Militaires de Louis XIV., vol. iii. p. 522; Basnage, chap. civ. p. 549; La Hode, book xxxv. p. 514; Limiers, book vi. p. 274; Lafare, chap. vii. p. 211; Sismondi, Histoire des Français, vol. xxv. pp. 280 and 282; Camille Rousset, Histoire de Louvois, vol. ii. p. 120.