I just wanted to say that Dex’s column on the man in the iron mask was a fascinating read, and very informative to boot. Good work!
The “Musketeer” books are: The Three Muskeers; Twenty Years After; and * The Viscount of Bragelonne, or, Ten Years Later.* “Viscount” is much longer than the other two, and is often split into multiple volumes. When printed in three volumes in English, they are often given their own titles: “The Viscount of Bragelonne”; “Louise de la Vallière”; and “The Man in the Iron Mask”. Another title, “The Son of Athos”, also pops up from time to time.
Sometimes “The Man in the Iron Mask” is used as a title for the whole thing, but such editions are usually massively cut. If you want to read the novel Dumas wrote, it’s much safer to look for an edition with the original title.
I didn’t see the DeCaprio movie, so I don’t know precisely what it covered, or how accurately.
Dumas also wrote an essay entitled “The Man in the Iron Mask”, in which he argues for the twin-brother theory as a matter of historic fact.
Thanks, John. I figured that the question of what Dumas wrote was another Staff Report… and would either take several paragraphs in an already abundantly long Report, or just be condensed to a sentence or two.
One point that everyone seems to have missed - Alexandre Dumas wrote historical FICTION … you know, the kind of stuff Georgette Heyer, Baroness D’Orczy and Mills & Boon’s stable of hacks churned out (and in the case of Mills & Boon, are still churning out) in order to make a pile of money. Any relation that this stuff bears to actual history is mere coincidence.
My illustrious relative took what was already a popular folk legend, embellished it a little and raked in the royalties. And then Hollywood took it and screwed it up completely - the way it always does with really good novels (Case in point - The Lord Of The Rings - Professor Tolkein is turning cartwheels in his grave.) Di Caprio’s “Man In The Iron Mask” may well bear some relation to the historical masked prisoner - he bears only a very distant, passing resemblance to uncle Alexandre’s.
sincerely
Ricky Dumas (a.k.a. chunda21)
Bravo Dex. Bravo.
Metaphorically, I admire your ability to weave a readable tapestry from pile of thread.
Very nice piece of exposition, Dex. One thing struck me about the “arguments against Matthioli” which you outlined:
"Matthioli may have died in 1694. Reference is made to a prisoner who died at Sainte-Marguerite… Obviously, if Matthioli died in 1694, he could not have been the masked prisoner of 1698.
There is a letter to Saint-Mars from the secretary of state in 1697, cautioning that he not ever ‘explain to anyone what it is your longtime prisoner did.’ But everyone knew what Matthioli did; there was no secret or mystery about it… There was no need to keep his face masked and his identity secret."
It occurs to me that if the King wished everyone to think Matthioli had died in 1694 – and if he was still very much alive in 1697 – then the secretary’s admonition to Saint-Mars might make some sense.
chunda21: Dorothy Dunnett (who died about a year ago) was a marvelous author of historical fiction who has been compared favorably with your ancestor. If any of her books are ever made into films, I’m sure she’ll be rolling around, too!
No, it is dependent on A) what history the author knew and B) how he chose to treat it.
Only if he cannot understand the fundamental differences between novel and cinema. I cannot think of anything in The Fellowship of the Ring that I would call a certainly wrong choice. It might, perhaps, have been wiser to attempt a television adaptation, after the manner of Babylon 5 (or The Forsyte Saga, for that matter), but, given the need to do the entire epic in nine or ten hours, and to do it in dramatic form, I have nothing but admiration for how it has been managed.
In The Code Book by Simon Singh, the author quotes a letter written by Francois de Louvois, Louis XIV’s Minister of War that indicates a third plausible identity to the masked prisoner. The letter was encoded in the Great Cipher, a type of encryption used for Louis’ most secret messages and political schemes that was finally broken at the end of the 19th century.
The letter begins by recounting the crimes of Vivien de Bulonde, a commander responsible for leading an attack on the town of Cuneo, on the French-Italian border. Concerned about the arrival of enemy troops from Austria, he abandoned his post and left behind his munitions and many of his wounded soldiers. These actions jeopardised the whole Piedmont campain, and the letter stresses the king thought Bulonde a coward: (I’m quoting the actual letter)
A google search shows that the decoding of the letter was made by Captain Bazeries in La Masque de fer, 1883. Do your sources mention Bulonde as a candidate?
That was another great report, Dex. Thanks.
Haj
why didn’t they just kill him?
after all, no due process; just “off with his head”
or ‘lost in an accident’ somewhere.
Why ask for trouble?
a kidnapping gone wrong?
a hostage against someone’s good behavior?
the father or brother of a reluctant mistress?
they must have wanted to be able to produce him on request, but who’s request?
chundra: << One point that everyone seems to have missed - Alexandre Dumas wrote historical FICTION … >>
Not missed at all. The fact is that Dumas’ fiction is what most people today think of when someone mentions “The Man in the iron Mask.” The question started with a reference to the recent movie version of that novel.
I thought the Staff Report is very clear, that there was a theory that the masked prisoner was an identical twin of the king and that Dumas’ fiction was the ultimate expression of that theory.
But but . . . I thought Louie Quatorzey said “l’etat, c’est moi,” not “je suis l’etat.” Am I wro-- wro–
You know . . . not right?
Yep, we’ll amend the report. Problem with me writing from memory.
Since I think I’m the only one who saw the DiCaprio and Malkovich movie, I have a question about it. At the beginning there is some strange disclaimer that goes something like this:
Is this a Dumas fabrication, or what?
Just one question… I’ve usually seen that quote near the beginning of the article in the form ‘l’etat, c’est moi’, not ‘je suis l’etat’.
Anyone have a clue of which is the real McCoy?
In his non-fiction essay (which, unlike the novel, is really titled The Man in the Iron Mask, I find the following:
Fouquet was the disgraced minister whom Dumas makes one of the co-conspirators to replace Louis with his twin in his novel.
The whole of the essay is at http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext01/emask11.txt.
A quick scan of the Gutenberg text shows no parallel passage in the novel; neither is there any historical preface such as is attached to The Three Musketeers.
Let me note that I’m pretty much reserached out on this topic, and if I never hear about the man in iron mask or Saint-Mars or Pignerol again, I’ll be quite happy. However, just to respond:
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John Kennedy suggests Fouquet might satisfy the conditions – a very high-level political prisoner who was at Pignerol at the right time. The problem is that Fouquet died in March 1680, eight years before the “masked prisoner” arrived at the Bastille. Is it possible that Fouquet’s death was faked? Well, sure, almost anything is possible, but most researchers on this subject think it is highly unlikely. I haven’t read the whole Dumas essay, John, (as I say, I’m burned out on this one) but I’d have to say that a newspaper article by someone who “says he saw” something in 1789 would be a dubious reference. There was major political clamor surrounding the masked prisoner at the time of the fall of the Bastille, and almost anything might have “come to light” to serve the Revolution.
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Seraphim suggests Bulond. I did not come across Bulond as a candidate in my researches. He was NOT one of the five prisoners at Pignerol in 1681 when Saint-Mars moved to the prison Exiles. Besides Matthioli and Dauger, the other three were Dubriel (who was mad), a mad monk, and La Riviere who was Fouquet’s valet.) Furthermore, a secret document not decoded until 1883 would be a li’l suspect to me. However, I have not read (and do not intend to) the Singh book.
I tried to organize the report into two categories: (1) the speculative (running the gamut from identical twin of the King to illigitimate son of Cromwell, with dozens, if not hundreds, in beween; and (2) deductions based on the five prisoners at Pignerol. I am assuming (always dangerous, but…) that Bulond fits into the first category. If Singh has some argument that places Bulond at Pignerol n 1681, that would be of some interest, but contrary to the basic evidence.
In short, I’m going to leave the Bulond theory for y’all. I have taken you down the path, and any of you who are interested in researching further are more than welcome to proceed. Not I, however.
Why do I always get these questions that look fairly straightforward on the surface and then turn out to be so long?
No, I merely quoted Dumas. He says that in 1789 someone published the statement that he had seen something at the Bastille, and that that person then went on (in 1789) to suggest that Fouquet’s death in 1680 had been faked. Dumas rejects the theory, and I expressed no opinion whatever.
Actually, Dex, Noone does discuss the Bulonde theory, providing strong reasons for discounting it. Bulonde was not one of the five prisoners held at Pignerol in 1681 because he was not arrested until 1691. He was then released after only two months in prison. Most damaging of all, Bazeries’s decipherment of the crucial phrase in Louvois’s letter as meaning ‘with a mask’ was only ever a guess and other, more likely, suggestions, such as ‘with a soldier’ or ‘with a guard’, have been proposed.
Thanks, APB. I don’t own the Noone book, I had to get it from inter-library loan, and I didn’t jot down any of the dozens of other candidates that weren’t at Pignerol in 1681, so Bulonde didn’t stick in my memory. Thanks for the clarification.