Masked Prisoner Dies: The Bastille Mystery Deepens

A prisoner who had spent decades in French royal dungeons died in the Bastille in Paris, his face concealed behind a mask of black velvet, his identity one of the most tantalizing mysteries in European history. No one who encountered him was permitted to speak to him. His jailers treated him with unusual deference, providing comfortable quarters and fine linens. When he died, his cell was stripped bare, its walls scraped and whitewashed, his personal effects destroyed. The masked prisoner had been in custody since at least 1669, held at the fortress of Pignerol under the care of Benigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, a jailer who guarded him with obsessive secrecy for the next 34 years. When Saint-Mars was transferred between prisons, the prisoner moved with him, passing through the island fortress of Sainte-Marguerite before arriving at the Bastille in 1698. Prison records identify him only as "Marchioly," though this name is now considered a deliberate misdirection. The mystery exploded into public consciousness after Voltaire published accounts in the 1750s claiming the prisoner was the twin brother of Louis XIV, hidden away because his existence threatened the legitimacy of the throne. Alexandre Dumas elaborated this theory in his 1847 novel The Man in the Iron Mask, upgrading the velvet covering to iron and creating one of literature's most enduring adventure stories. Historians have proposed dozens of candidates. The most widely accepted modern theory identifies the prisoner as Eustache Dauger, a valet who may have been imprisoned because he possessed dangerous knowledge about financial or political dealings involving Louis XIV's government. The exact nature of that knowledge remains unknown. Other theories have suggested an Italian diplomat, Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, who double-crossed Louis XIV in a territorial negotiation, or various illegitimate sons of prominent figures.