The Iron Mask: Who the Mysterious Prisoner Really Was

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Man in the Iron Mask is the most mysterious prisoner during the reign of Louis XIV, whose secret has not been fully solved to this day. The only reliable information about him is the number under which he was held in captivity - 64489001. This man was born approximately in the 1640s, and died in 1698. He was also kept in Pignerola, Esquila, on the le Saint-Marguerite and the Bastille, where he ended his days.

Historical data

The mysterious prisoner actually wore a mask, but not made of iron, but of black velvet. Its purpose was not to inflict pain, but solely to hide the identity of this person from outsiders. The information about the prisoner was so classified that even the guards themselves did not know who he was. The only exception, perhaps, was Benigne Doverne de Saint-Mar, who was the governor of all prisons where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned. The incredible mystery and secrecy surrounding this prisoner gave rise to many speculations, legends, versions and theories. However, the Kramol portal cannot fully vouch for the consistency and reliability of any of them.

For the first time, information about a certain prisoner in an iron mask appeared in 1745 in a book entitled "Secret Notes on the History of the Persian Court", which was published in Amsterdam. In it, the author wrote that the illegitimate son of the King and Duchess de Lavalier, who bore the title of Count of Vermandois, languished in imprisonment under the number 64489001. He was allegedly arrested for a slap in the face, which he gave to his brother, the Great Dauphin.

This version does not stand up to criticism, since the Count of Vermandois was born in 1667 and lived only 16 years, while the mysterious prisoner was taken into custody in 1669, when the mentioned count was only two years old, and survived him for two decades.

Brother of the king

François Voltaire assumed that behind the mask of Iron Man was hidden the blood brother of Louis XIV, whom the king sent into captivity in order to get rid of rivals for the throne in this way. It is the personality of the prisoner that determines the mystery with which he was surrounded throughout the entire period of his stay in dungeons.

Louis XIV's mother, Anna of Austria, could not get pregnant for a long time, but then she still had a son from extramarital affairs. Subsequently, she did give birth to the rightful heir to the throne. When Louis found out that he had an older brother, he decided to get rid of him, but he still did not go for murder, but simply sent him to prison, ordering him to put on the very mask to hide his face from those around him.

There was a version that the prisoner was actually the twin brother of Louis XIV. The birth of twin boys in the royal family led to the question of succession to the throne. It is assumed that one of the sons of the royal couple was raised in secret from society, and Louis, when he grew up and learned about his existence, decided to send his brother to prison.

Ercol Mattioli

One of the theories says that the mask hid the face of the Italian Hercule Antonio Mattioli, who agreed with the king that he would convince his overlord to give the fortress of Casale to the French. However, Mattioli decided to deceive Louis by telling several countries about this agreement, having received a financial reward for this. Naturally, the king could not leave such an act unpunished, and threw the Italian in prison for life imprisonment.

General Bulond

The secret notes of the French king gave rise to another assumption as to who the Man in the Iron Mask really was. Among the legacy of Louis XVI are encrypted diaries, the contents of which were revealed several centuries after they were written by the cryptographer Etienne Bazeri. The data obtained as a result of decryption gave reason to assume that the face of General Vivien de Boulond, who became the culprit of the defeat in one of the battles of the Nine Years War, could be hidden behind the mask.

True Peter the First

There is an assumption that the famous prisoner number 64489001 is in fact Peter the Great. Some researchers believe that just in 1698, when the Man in the Iron Mask appeared in the Bastille, a substitution of the Russian tsar was carried out. It was at this moment that Peter the Great made his diplomatic mission in Europe. Contemporaries noted that an Orthodox tsar went abroad, honoring the age-old traditions that had developed in Russia, and some dressed-up European returned, bringing a lot of completely unimaginable innovations. Such drastic changes gave rise to rumors that the tsar in Europe had been replaced. Later, this substitution was associated with the mystical Iron Mask.

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