Chapter VIII (2)

At least twelve or thirteen candidates have been brought forward for the melancholy honour of being the personage in question. Two of them are English—the Duke of Monmouth and Henry Cromwell. Of the latter it is only necessary to state that he lived a quiet country life after the restoration, and died in Huntingdonshire in 1679. The Duke of Monmouth is supposed, by M. de St. Foix, to have found some one obliging enough to mount the scaffold in his stead, and to have been sent to France, to be kept in safe custody. This ineffably absurd theory is demolished by the fact, that, when Monmouth was executed, the man with the mask had been for twenty years in prison. Equally baseless is the system of the Chevalier de Taulès, who made a claim for Ardewicks, the patriarch of the Armenians at Constantinople, who was kidnapped, taken to France, and lodged in the Bastile by the Jesuits, to whom he had given offence. But Ardewicks was not carried off till 1699 or 1700, and he is known to have embraced catholicism, recovered his liberty, and died at Paris. A recent French writer, of very considerable talent and research, has revived the idea that Fouquet was the prisoner, and has supported his argument with great skill; but it is impossible to reconcile his supposition with the story told by Voltaire. With respect to Fouquet the precautions and deference, which Voltaire mentions, would not have been deemed necessary. We have seen that the author of the “Secret Memoirs on Persia” asserts the Count of Vermandois to have been the unknown captive. Voltaire contemptuously denies the truth of this assertion; which is, indeed, sufficiently refuted by the well-ascertained fact, that the count died, of small-pox, at the army in Flanders, in 1683, and was buried at Arras; his death was notorious to numbers of persons. The Duke of Beaufort has been invested with the mask on no better authority. There can be no doubt that he was slain, in a sally, at the siege of Candia, in 1669. But, say those who adopt him as their hero, his body was never found. It certainly was not recognised; and for this plain reason, that the Turks stripped it, and cut off the head. The next asserted owner of the mask is backed by no less than four champions, Dutens, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, and the late Lord Dover, and his cause has been ably supported by them all. The claimant for whom they contend is Matthioli, secretary of the Duke of Mantua, who, for having outwitted Louis in a negotiation respecting the cession of Casal, was seized by order of the monarch, and imprisoned at Pignerol and other places. There are, however, circumstances which seem decisive against his being the man with the iron mask. It will perhaps suffice to mention that, instead of meeting with respect and indulgence, he was treated with the utmost harshness, and even cruelty. It has been argued, as a presumption on his side, that his name bears a resemblance to that of Marchiali, under which the unknown captive was buried. The resemblance, I think, is not a whit closer than that which Fluellin so ingeniously discovers between Macedon and Monmouth, and is a sorry basis on which to build an argument. Another supposition gives the mask to Don John de Gonzaga, a natural brother of the Duke of Mantua, who is imagined to have accompanied Matthioli in disguise to the conference at which he was seized. This supposition is rendered untenable, by irrefragable proof that Matthioli was alone.

We have now arrived at the only remaining name which has been mentioned as that of the mysterious prisoner. Voltaire, as we have seen, affirms that he was a son of Anne of Austria. This assertion seems to receive support from the language which is said to have been held by Louis XV. Laborde, the head valet-de-chambre of that monarch, who enjoyed much of his confidence, once endeavoured to obtain from him the long-concealed secret. He did not succeed. “I pity him,” replied the king, “but his detention was injurious only to himself, and _averted great misfortunes_. Thou must not know the secret.” It is manifest that such a speech could not be made with reference to any of the persons who have been enumerated. It is equally manifest that, as Voltaire has intimated, the mask could have been worn for no other purpose than to prevent a striking likeness from being recognised.

Various conjectures have been made as to the paternity of the unknown child, to which Anne of Austria is thought to have given birth. By some the Duke of Buckingham has been assigned as its father, others have attributed it to a French nobleman; some have imagined that it was the fruit of a legitimate union with Cardinal Mazarin, a kind of union which, however, could not take place; and others, with more tenderness for the character of the queen, have represented it to be a twin brother of Louis XIV. The theory of his royal birth may, perhaps, be as erroneous as all the rest; but it appears to me to be the only one by which we can account for the close and perpetual imprisonment, the pains taken to confine the secret to as few persons as possible, the carefully concealed features, and the respect and indulgence which are asserted to have been uniformly shown to the unfortunate captive[8].

We must now turn our attention from the victim of state policy to some of the victims of religious persecution.

To enumerate all whom Jansenism led to the Bastile would be a tedious labour, and no less uninteresting than tedious, as little more than a dry list of names would be the result. Among the Jansenists who towards the close of Louis XIV.’s reign were sent to the Bastile, we find Tiron, a Benedictine, who was prior of Meulan; Germain Veillant, an author; and Lebrun-Desmarets, a man of much theological erudition. Tiron was committed “for different writings, on matters of religion and state, and against the king and the Jesuits.” The coupling together of the king and the disciples of Loyola, as though they were coequal powers, is a striking proof of the vast influence which the Society of Jesus had acquired. Veillant’s offence was his being “a violent Jansenist, in connexion with Father Quesnel, and having got his works printed, and managed his affairs at Paris.” He was examined eighty-nine times, and was probably treated with more than common harshness, for he fell ill on the day that he was released, and died in the course of a few days.

Lebrun-Desmarets, a native of Rouen, who entered the Bastile in 1707, two years previous to the destruction of Port-Royal monastery, was of a family which was strongly attached to that persecuted establishment. His father, a bookseller of Rouen, was condemned to the galleys, for having printed books in vindication of it. The son was partly educated in the convent, and never ceased to regard its inmates with affection and reverence. In 1707, when they were involved in a harassing lawsuit by their enemies, Lebrun espoused their cause so ardently that he was imprisoned. He was held in durance for five years, and was treated with great severity. After he recovered his liberty, he took up his abode at Orleans, where he died, in 1731, at the age of eighty. On Palm Sunday, the day before his death, fearing that a priest would refuse to administer the sacrament to him, he dragged his enfeebled frame to the church, that he might not quit the world without the consolation of having participated in the rites of religion. Lebrun’s principal work is a “Liturgical Journey in France,” in which he gives an account of the most remarkable customs and ceremonies of the various churches.

We now revert once more to prisoners whose sins were political. Count John Albert de Bucquoy, the next individual who comes under our notice, was of the family of the celebrated Spanish and Imperial general, who bore the same name and title. He was a native of Champagne, in which province he was born about 1650. A line in Dryden’s severe description of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, will partly characterize Bucquoy; he

“Was every thing by starts, and nothing long.”

The circumstances of his having been left an orphan at the age of four years, and having received a very imperfect education, may, perhaps, account for some of his eccentricities. He embraced the military life; but when he had served for five years, an escape from danger, which he considered as miraculous, induced him to make a vow to withdraw from all worldly pursuits. The rules of the Carthusian monks not being strict enough to satisfy him, he entered at La Trappe, where he so much injured his health by supererogatory austerities that the Abbé de Rancé, the superior of the convent, was obliged to dismiss him. Bucquoy then abruptly resumed his warlike attire; but soon after, with equal abruptness, again cast it off, to dress himself in rags, and become a hermit. Flying from the temptations of Paris, he next settled at Rouen, where, under the name of La Mort, he for two years kept a school, to give gratuitous instruction to the poor. The Jesuits of that city admired his talents and his humble demeanour, and fruitlessly endeavoured to enrol him in their fraternity. Having been accidentally recognised by a person who had been a brother officer, he could no longer preserve his incognito, and he therefore quitted Rouen, and bent his way to Paris. There he formed the plan of founding a new monastic order, destined to prove to unbelievers the truth of the Christian religion. It appears to have been about this time that he assumed the garb and title of an abbé. But while he was thus planning the demolition of incredulity, he so bewildered himself in his theological speculations and reasonings, that he became a sceptic. One thing which contributed much to produce the change in him was, that, notwithstanding his self-inflicted severities, he had failed to obtain the power of working miracles. This alone would suffice to prove that his intellects were disordered. At this period, his relatives, who had long believed him dead, were made acquainted with his being in existence, and they procured for him a benefice. Bucquoy, however, had got rid of his religious schemes, and had relapsed into a taste for the profession of a soldier. His wish was now to raise a regiment. But while he was indulging this new freak, he attracted the attention of the government by his invectives against despotism and the abuse of power. He was mistaken for the Abbé de la Bourlie, who afterwards became notorious in England under the name of Guiscard, and was arrested. When the mistake was discovered, he would have been set free, had not his indiscreet language and conduct caused him to be detained. He was committed to Fort-l’Evêque, from whence, however, he contrived to escape. After having been at large for a considerable time, he was caught and shut up in the Bastile, with a strict charge to the keepers, that he should be closely watched, as being an enterprising and dangerous person. The officers of that prison were seldom slack in executing such orders, yet, in spite of all their vigilance, Bucquoy took his measures so skilfully, and carried them into effect with so much secrecy, that, in May 1709, after having been confined for two years, he left his jailors in the lurch, and made good his retreat to Switzerland. As soon as he was in safety, he began to negotiate with the French ministers for his return to France, and the restoration of his property. Failing in this, he journeyed to Holland, and submitted to the allies a project for converting France into a republic, and annihilating arbitrary power. This scheme, too, fell to the ground. It was, nevertheless, beneficial to him, as it gained for him the friendship of General Schulemburg, who, in 1714, introduced him, at Hanover, to George I. The monarch was pleased with his conversation, admitted him to his table, and gave him a pension. Bucquoy lived to nearly the age of ninety. In his latter days, he wholly neglected his dress, suffered his beard to grow, and might well have been mistaken for a squalid mendicant.

There was perhaps a spice of madness in Bucquoy, which sufficiently accounts for his eccentric conduct. For the faults, or rather crimes, of the personage who now comes under our notice there was no such excuse. Throughout the whole of his existence, which, like that of Bucquoy, was protracted far beyond the period usually allotted to man, the Marshal Duke of Richelieu displayed as few virtues, and as many vices, as any courtier on record. He had superficial talents, some wit, polished manners, a handsome person, and much bravery; and this is all that can be said for him. On the other hand, he was wholly without honour, morals, and religion; a supporter and adulator of despotism, a political intriguer, who could stoop to use the basest means for the accomplishment of his purposes, a reckless duellist, and a systematic and heartless seducer; he was, in fact, an impersonation of the profligacy and corruption which distinguished the courts of the regent Duke of Orleans and the fifteenth Louis.

Richelieu, who, in his early years, was known as the Duke of Fronsac, was born in 1696. He was a seven months’ child, whom after his birth it was necessary to keep in a box filled with cotton, and the preservation of whose existence was long doubtful. When his health was established, he was put under able preceptors; but he derived little benefit from their instructions, and he never could spell with tolerable correctness. He acquired, however, those showy graces which, undoubtedly, are an ornament to virtue, but which, when the possessor has no virtue, can captivate only persons of frivolous minds. He was introduced to the court at the early age of fourteen, and soon, as St. Simon tells us, became its darling. The female portion of it was in raptures with him, and seems to have expressed its feelings without any regard to decorum. Fronsac, whose passions were uncommonly precocious, met the forward with equal ardour, and spared no pains to ensnare the few who were more timid or more modest. He went to such a length that censure began to fall heavily on the Duchess of Burgundy, and his own father deemed it prudent to request a lettre-de-cachet against him, under which he was for fourteen months confined in the Bastile. During his seclusion, Fronsac was attended by a preceptor; and he consequently came out of prison with some knowledge of Latin, and some addition to his scanty stock of useful information; but, as far as concerned dignity of mind and purity of heart, no improvement whatever had taken place.

The licentious career of Richelieu was suspended for a while, by his serving as a volunteer in the army. He was present at the battle of Denain, and at the sieges of the fortresses which were recovered by Villars in consequence of his victory; and he distinguished himself so much, that he was made aide-de-camp to the marshal, and was chosen by him to convey to Paris the news of the surrender of Friburg. In 1715, he succeeded to the title of Richelieu. On this occasion he performed an action which merits praise; the property which was available for the debts of his father was far from sufficient to cover them, he generously paid to the creditors the full amount of their claims.

Again all the faculties of Richelieu were devoted to licentious pleasures, which were now and then interrupted by a duel. In 1716 he had a desperate encounter with the Count de Gacé, for which the regent committed both parties to the Bastile, where they remained from March till August. This imprisonment was, however, less severe than that which he had to endure two years afterwards. In the spring of 1719, he was sent, for the third time, to the Bastile, but, in this instance, he went with the brand of traitor upon him, and was treated accordingly. He was concerned in the Cellamare conspiracy, and had promised to deliver up Bayonne to the Spaniards, and to join in exciting the south of France to revolt. “If the Duke of Richelieu had four heads,” said the regent, “I have proof enough against him to deprive him of them all.” On his first arrival at the Bastile, the duke was placed in a dungeon; but female influence soon obtained his removal to more comfortable quarters, and permission for him to walk daily on the ramparts of the fortress. His walks gave rise to an occurrence, which speaks volumes as to the unblushing depravity of the high-born dames of France. During the hour that he was walking, a string of elegant carriages, filled with women who notoriously were or had been his mistresses, passed slowly backward and forward in front of the spot where he was, and an intercourse of signs was kept up between the prisoner and these unscrupulous ladies. It was by the intercession of two princesses, who were enamoured of him, that his release was obtained, after he had suffered a captivity of five months.

The danger to which Richelieu had been exposed on this occasion, though it did not render him less vicious, rendered him, at least in one respect, more prudent; he did not again put his head in the way of being brought to the block. Thenceforward he limited his political intrigues, in France, to acquiring benefits for himself, circumventing his rivals, providing mistresses for the king, and making those mistresses the instruments of his designs; and by these arts he became a thriving courtier. Honours of all kinds, military and civil, were showered upon him. At the age of twenty-four, without any literary pretensions whatever, he was unanimously chosen a member of the French Academy; and, in 1734, he was nominated an honorary member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. In the army he rose to the rank of marshal; but his titles as a soldier were not unearned. At Kehl, Philipsburg, Dettingen, Friburg, Fontenoy, Laufeldt, Genoa, and Minorca, they were fairly won. In his last campaign, however, that of Hanover, in 1757, he sullied his laurels by the most infamous conduct. His rapacity and extortion were a scorpion scourge to the country which France had subdued; and, as though he feared that his own endless exactions would not suffice to make him hated, he allowed, if not encouraged, his troops to be guilty of marauding, and of various other enormities. The subsequent defeats of the French army were the righteous result of these dishonourable proceedings. As a negotiator, Richelieu manifested considerable skill. He was twice employed in that capacity; at Vienna, from 1725 to 1729, and at Dresden, in 1746. In both instances he fully accomplished the purpose of his mission, and in both he displayed a degree of ostentatious magnificence which had seldom been equalled. When he entered Vienna, his train consisted of seventy-five carriages; and his horses, and those of his officers, were shod with silver, the shoes being slightly fastened, that they might fall off and be left for the populace. In the state employments which he held, there appears to have been but a solitary instance in which he was entitled to praise. As lieutenant-general of the king in Languedoc, he once deviated into the right path; by a judicious mixture of firmness and mildness, he averted the disturbances which were about to arise from the persecution of the protestants. But it was not in his nature to be permanently good. At a later period, his harshness, in the same country, was rewarded by his being appointed governor of Guienne and Gascony; and his pride and tyranny very soon rendered him an object of detestation in both of these provinces. At court, his influence and his example had a baneful effect. He for more than a quarter of a century possessed the friendship of Louis XV., and he foully abused it; he pandered to the monarch’s lusts, and strained every nerve, with too much success, to prevent the misguided sovereign from carrying into effect his occasional resolves, to lead in future a life more suitable to his years, and to the lofty station which he filled. He was the Mephistopheles of his royal master.

Richelieu was so fortunate as not to be exposed to the revolutionary tempest; his disgraceful career was brought to a close in August, 1788, when he had attained the age of ninety-two.

Of prisoners less known, or less important, during the period to which this chapter refers, it will suffice to give a scanty specimen. Religious intolerance contributed largely to people the jails. To enumerate all who expiated in dungeons the crime of being protestants, would be an endless task; in 1686 a hundred and forty-seven persons, and in 1689 sixty-one, were sent to the Bastile alone, almost all of whom were hugonots. To unite in marriage the members of that proscribed class was a heinous offence; a priest, named John de Pardieu, was doomed to the Bastile for committing it. Whole families were immured for endeavouring to leave the kingdom. Some of the victims were driven to despair by the manner in which they were treated. Such was the case with the Sieur Braconneau, who, as the register specifies, was “imprisoned on account of religion, and died of a wound which he gave to himself with a knife.” The protestants were, however, not the sole sufferers; the Jansenists, too, came in for an ample share of persecution.

Real or pretended plots and evil speaking against the king were another fruitful source of commitments. The following are a few instances: Don Thomas Crisafi “suspected of intrigues with the Spanish ambassador against the interests of the king.” Joseph Jurin, a footman, for having said, “Who can prevent me from killing the king?” The Sieur Beranger de Berliere, “for a plot against the king’s person.” The Count de Morlot, accused of “detestable purposes against the king’s life.” Desvallons, “for speaking insolently of the king.” Laurence Lemierre, shoemaker, and his wife, for dangerous discourse about the king; and Francis Brindjoug for the same offence. The Sieur Cardel, “for important reasons, regarding the safety of the king’s person.” Jonas de Lamas, a baker, “for execrations against the king.” This man was twenty years in the Bastile, and was then removed to the Bicêtre. The Sieur de la Perche, a fencing-master, accused of having said that “the king oppressed his subjects, and thought only of amusing himself with his old woman; that he would soon be a king of beggars; that his officers were starving; that he had ruined the kingdom by driving away the hugonots; and that he cared not a pin for his people.” The last article of the Sieur de la Perche’s charge against the sovereign was made in language which is too vulgar to be translated.

Under the head of miscellaneous offences may be mentioned the following: Pierre His, “for having assisted several persons to go clandestinely to America.” Those persons were probably hugonots. The Sieur Marini, envoy from Genoa. This commitment, for which no reason is assigned, took place in 1684, the year in which Louis XIV. made his disgraceful attack on Genoa. Besnoit, called Arnonville, “an evil-minded woman, who held improper discourse.” Charles Combon, called Count de Longueval, “a maker of horoscopes, a fortune-teller, and vender of drugs to procure abortion.” The Abbé Dubois, “a wicked and troublesome person.” Papillard, “a bad catholic.” Saint Vigor, “affecting to be a hermit, but a man of licentious manners.” John Blondeau, a hermit, “a suspected person.” Peter John Mere, professing himself a physician, “for selling improper drugs.” After having been thirty years in the Bastile, Mere was sent to the Bedlam at Charenton. Bailly, a hatter, “for a design to establish a hat manufactory in a foreign country.” Louisa Simon, a widow, “pretends to tell fortunes, to have secrets for inspiring love, and to be able to make marriages.” John Galembert, of the gens-d’armes, “a great traveller, suspected of corresponding with the enemies of the state.” He was subsequently exiled to Languedoc, his native province, within the limits of which he was ordered to remain. The Prince de Riccia, “one of the party at Naples that is against the French succession.” Nicholas Buissen, “for insolent letters against Samuel Bernard (the court banker), with an intention to hurt his credit.” The Sieur de Soulange, formerly a captain of infantry in the Orleannois regiment, “a rogue, and spy on both sides.”

It will be seen that, in some of those instances, the individuals deserved legal punishment; that, in others, the charges were trivial, or vague, or ridiculous; and that in at least one case the French monarch displayed gross contempt of the law of nations. His imprisonment of Marini, the Genoese envoy, can only be paralleled by the manner in which the Turks used to treat Christian ambassadors on the breaking out of hostilities. But it was of a piece with the rest of his conduct towards the Genoese republic. It was retributive justice that he, the wanton disturber and insulter of Europe, should himself live to have his pride trodden into the dust, and to dread the approach of a hostile army to the walls of his own capital.