The Man Behind the Iron Mask Read Online Free PDF

who was at that time a child of two living under the care and protection of Colbert himself. Athénais de Montespan had no reason to be unhappy either: the post of acting-commander of the fleet was given to her brother, the Duc de Vivonne.
    There were, however, a great many people who refused to believe that Beaufort was dead. On 31 August, Navailles withdrew from the island, abandoning it to the Turks, and when his troops disembarked at Marseilles nine days later they brought with them the story that Beaufort had been captured alive and taken to Constantinople. Meanwhile the English had received word from Athens, and the Vatican from the islands of Milos and Corfu, that Beaufort had been seen on a Turkish ship in the Aegean. Before the end of the month there were people in Paris prepared to wager that Beaufort was still alive. Just how wild these rumours were was difficult at that juncture to say, but it was evident that, if the Turks really did have the cousin of Louis XIV captive, they would do something to exploit the situation before very long. As time elapsed and the Turks continued to make no move at all, it seemed more and more certain that he was indeed dead. Nonetheless the people of Paris ten years later were still clinging to the belief that he was a prisoner in Constantinople and one day would escape and return. No doubt this faith was nourished by many more rumours, because as late as summer 1682 one such story was going the rounds at court. It was said that a dragoon, who after being captured at Candy had escaped from prison and returned to France, had seen Beaufort alive and well and apart from a big blond beard, unchanged, in the prison of the Seven Towers in Constantinople.
    According to Lagrange-Chancel, Beaufort’s prison was not in Turkey but in France. At the siege of Candy he was kidnapped by the French secret service, smuggled back to France and clapped behind bars in Pignerol with his head encased in an iron mask. In his letter to Fréron, Lagrange-Chancel had this to say: ‘M. de Lamotte-Guérin, who had the command of those islands in the time that I was detained there, assured me that this prisoner was the Duc de Beaufort who was said to have been killed at the siege of Candy but whose body according to the commentaries of the time could never be found … If one considers the Duc de Beaufort’s turbulent spirit and the part he played in the disturbances in Paris at the time of the Fronde, one will not perhaps be surprised at the violent course of action employed to secure him, especially since the post of admiral, which he had received in reversion, put him every day in a position to cross the great designs of M. Colbert who was in charge of the Admiralty. This admiral, who in the eyes of the minister, seemed so dangerous, was replaced, according to that minister’s wishes, by the son of the King and the Duchesse de La Vallière, the Duc de Vermandois, who was only two years old.’ One might add here, in support of Lagrange-Chancel’s theory, that Colbert’s brother, with whom Beaufort shared command during the battle, was certainly well placed to arrange such a kidnapping.
    For most of Lagrange-Chancel’s readers, Beaufort was not sufficiently dangerous to Colbert or the King to warrant arrest and imprisonment in such an extraordinary fashion. For all his rebellious deeds of the past and dreams of future glory, his continuing popularity and increasing influence, the limitations of his personality made him a serious threat to no one except assailants in pitched battle. Some more important reason had to be found if he was to be seriously considered as a candidate for the Iron Mask. It was not until the twentieth century that anyone came up with such a reason, and in the meantime the issue was further complicated in 1868 by Augustin Jal, the scholar-historian and keeper of the Admiralty archives. He had reason to believe, he said, that Beaufort had entered a