The Mysterious Man in the Mask: A Mini-Essay

     In his diary, which recounts his experiences in the infamous Bastille prison from 1690 to 1706, Lieutenant Etienne du Junca describes his bizarre encounter with an unknown masked prisoner confined to the third floor of the Bertauderie Tower who, according to du Junca, was well treated by the prison staff and behaved like a complete gentleman.[1] Unlike the other prisoners, the mysterious individual was permitted to attend Catholic Mass on Sundays and wore a black velvet mask until his death in November of 1703.[2] Outside of his genteel compliance and baffling accessory, du Junca knew nothing about the man and his identity, made famous by Alexandre Dumas’ fictionalized account in The Vicomte of Bragelonne (1847), has plagued historians for centuries. In 1771, Voltaire postulated the enigmatic figure was the brother of King Louis XIV, sequestered to the prison to prevent doubts about the French monarch’s legitimacy. Additionally, he replaced the fabric mask with an iron contraption with a movable jaw. Three quarters of a century later, Alexandre Dumas perpetuated the legend in his novel. Since then, hypotheses have ranged from the playwright Molière, the illegitimate son of English King Charles II, the deceitful politician Antonio Ercole Matthioli, the valet informant Eustace Dauger, and the bastard progeny of English ruler Oliver Cromwell.[3] One of the more interesting theories proposes that Dumas and Voltaire were correct about the rightful king’s imprisonment and, during his incarceration, he fathered a child with a female attendant who fled to Corsica and raised their son under the surname Bonaparte, thus solidifying the famed stateman’s claims of being a legitimate inheritor of the French throne.[4]

Works Referenced

Briffault, Frederic. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte: His Life, Captivity and Escape from the Fortress of Ham. 2nd ed. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1852.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. 1847. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Voltaire. Les Questions sur l’Encyclopédie. 2nd ed. 1771. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2019.

Weir, William. History’s Greatest Lies: The Startling Truths Behind World Events Our History Books Got Wrong. New York: Crestline, 2009.
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[1] Weir, 144.
[2] Weir, 144.
[3] Weir, 145.
[4] Briffault, 351-352.