Mrs. Hugh Fraser

The Battleground of Europe—The Riddle of “The Man in the Iron Mask”—Its True Story—Louis XIV’s Ambition in Italy—Plot to Secure Casale—Character of Charles, Duke of Mantua—Count Mattioli, His Favourite—Terms of the Transfer—Mission of the Count to Paris—Conclusion of the Treaty—Mattioli’s Double Dealing—Ominous Delays—The Storm Breaks.

It is a far cry, geographically speaking, from Rome to the vast, alluvial plain of Lombardo-Venezia, that most bloodstained, perhaps, of all the districts of the earth; for, if Flanders has been called the cock-pit of Europe, the immense lowlands of upper Italy may with equal justice lay claim to the title of the battlefield of the old world.

Scarcely a parish of it, from Rivoli in the west, to Aquileia in the east, but has, at one time or another—and, in many instances, not once but again and again—been deluged with the blood of armies and of individuals in public and private struggles during the course of the centuries. From Rivoli, rock-bound in the shadow of the Savoy and Alps, across to sad Aquileia, slowly decaying among its fever-stricken rice-fields by the Adriatic lagoons, shades of MassÉna’s Frenchmen may well look over to where their hereditary foes first poured into the southern “Mayland,” as they named it under the leadership of Attila, a thousand and three hundred and forty-five years earlier; whilst, between the two, the dust of innumerable armoured condottieri and “Landsknechte” of the middle ages and the Renaissance is mingled with that of hundreds of thousands—Latins, Teutons, Slavs, and Magyars—since fallen in this, the cloth-and-bullet age of our development from the days of Pavia to those of Solferino and Custozza.

Truly, this “Mayland” of the Gothic invaders—whence, as some hold, is derived the name of Milan—is one of the most fertile of all soils for those endowed with the gift of what Sir Thomas Browne so quaintly styled, “the art of reminiscential evocation.” Its history has been made familiar to us, moreover, by many writers and painters and sculptors, all along the road of the centuries; and yet, for me, at least, the very essence of its fascination lies in some of the less known recesses of its treasure-house of human vicissitudes and human good and evil. Its towns and castles, its villas and churches, have their tales of glory or of terror, of sorrow or triumph to tell; and the story of them is the story of a people, and of a society, that have preserved their characteristics intact throughout more changes of government and of ideas than have fallen to the lot of any others in all the world, with the possible exception of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Naples.

There are in this world of ours certain spots that, on first beholding them, cause our hearts to thrill and glow with an extraordinary gladness, by reason of their perfect beauty and the exquisite harmony of them with their surroundings; until, suddenly, we learn the name of the place—and then it seems to us as though the loveliness at which we have been gazing changes under our very eyes, and, as we draw closer to it, becomes swiftly hideous with all the loathsomeness of some dead thing first seen from afar.

Such a one was once, for Victor Hugo, on viewing it of a summer’s evening from the window of a railway train, the town of Sedan, and just such another, for the wanderer who comes into sight of it for the first time, is to be found in a little old bourg at the foot of the mountains in western Lombardy, nestling among poplars and gardens, and crowned by the spire of an ancient church that rises from near the remains of a contemporary castle, once the citadel of the place.

The name of the town is Pinerolo.

The name of Pinerolo, though not so widely known as that of Sedan, is yet linked for ever with one of the most tragically famous of all personalities—that of the “Man in the Iron Mask,” Hercules Anthony Mattioli, as he has now at last been proved irrefutably to have been by Monsieur Funck-Brentano in that gentleman’s luminous “Legends and Archives of the Bastille,” in which at one blow the writer destroys the pretensions of the several other candidates for that mournful honour.

Very few riddles, I should think, if any at all, have so constantly occupied the minds of those interested in historical curiosities during the last hundred and fifty years as has done that of the mysterious prisoner of Louis XIV; rarely, if ever, has any question been so hotly disputed by one generation and another of antiquarian scholars. But perhaps the most fascinating work on the subject is an English one, that of Mr. Tighe Hopkins,[25] which I would cordially recommend to all lovers of historical writings.

The whole episode of the “Man in the Iron Mask” furnishes as consummate an instance as any on record of the atrocious vengeance of one human being upon another; if ever Louis XIV was unworthy of his title of “the most Christian King” it was in his unmerciful cruelty towards the man who had inflicted upon him the most crushing diplomatic defeat of his whole reign, that same Count Mattioli. It was for making him ridiculous in the eyes of all who had any knowledge of the affair, by destroying his pet political scheme in regard to Italy, that King Louis condemned Mattioli to life-long imprisonment and to total separation from all that could make his existence endurable—the man’s religion alone excepted. So that, for twenty-four years, from May 2, 1679, to the hour of his death, which took place about ten o’clock in the night of November 19, 1703, the unhappy Italian endured the living death of a man deprived of all knowledge of those he had loved and left behind him, and who on their side had long assumed him to be dead in very fact. Neither his wife nor his father ever learned what became of Mattioli after his disappearance on that fatal 2d of May.

The beginnings of Mattioli’s tragedy were simple enough. They had their foundation, on the one hand, in the overweening ambition of Louis XIV in regard to Italy, where France had possessed Pinerolo since Cardinal Richelieu’s time; and, on the other hand, in the extravagance and debauchery—and the consequent need of money—of one of the most contemptible men who ever lived: Charles of Gonzaga, fourth Duke of Mantua and the owner of the Marquisate of Montferrat, with its strong place of Casale, that lay on the Po, between forty and fifty miles east of Turin. Thus, if Casale could only be brought within his power, the French King would be in a position to prevent any further advance of the Piedmontese into Italy by his own domination in Lombardy. It was his minister of war, the brilliant, if unscrupulous and personally immoral Louvois, who suggested to Louis in 1676 the idea of possessing himself of Casale, and so of making France the arbiter of Italian development.

Nothing could have been more to the taste of the monarch whose appetite for Italy at that time was being whetted by his naval triumph over his Dutch and Spanish adversaries off Sicily, by which he enjoyed for a space the sovereignty of the Mediterranean. The only possible difficulty in the matter was that of inducing the owner of Casale, the Duke of Mantua, to make over the control of it to King Louis—a difficulty of which the astute Louvois undertook to dispose, without fail, by means of pressure in the right place. Thus reassured, his sovereign left the management of the affair entirely in the hands of Louvois.

Louvois did not keep the King waiting long for further and most welcome news upon the subject of Casale and the Duke of Mantua. He had placed the matter, he reported, with the French representative in Venice, the AbbÉ D’Estrades, for investigation; and D’Estrades, an ambitious, intriguing man, only too anxious for an opportunity of distinguishing himself in the eyes of his master, had replied that he felt perfect confidence in his own ability to bring about the desired result. He was thoroughly informed, he said, of the Duke of Mantua’s affairs; and, so far as these were concerned, the success of the enterprise was a foregone conclusion.

In point of fact, the Duke of Mantua was, as Mr. Tighe Hopkins puts it, “up for sale”; his revenues, as D’Estrades reported to Louvois, were spent in advance, and he was helplessly in the hands of the Jews; there was nothing he owned that he would not be willing to sell for money to spend on his pleasures in Venice, where he lived almost habitually and whence he never returned to Mantua except upon expeditions of rack-rent. He was also much under the influence of his favourites, to whom he was accustomed to leave the governing of Mantua and the administration of his affairs; all he asked for himself was that they should leave him to his boon companions in Venice, “his gamesters, his women, and his wine-parties.” And it was D’Estrades’ opinion that he might best be approached in the matter of Casale through one of his favourites.

The responsibility for Duke Charles’ way of life may not have lain entirely with the young man himself, then in the springtime of life; for it would seem that some of the blame should fall upon his widowed mother, Archduchess Isabella Clara of Austria, the head of his council and virtual ruler of his small domain; and Isabella Clara was as notoriously opposed to the interests of the King of France as she was favourable to those of the King of Spain, his sworn opponent in Italy. And it may even be that, in order to keep the destinies of Mantua in her own control, she rather encouraged than otherwise her son’s absence from his territories in order the more easily to administer them in union with the Spanish policy—Spain being then allied with Austria against the encroachments of their rapacious Gallic neighbour.

Duke Charles, himself, according to D’Estrades in writing to Louis XIV from Venice, was endowed with “more talent and ambition than he is thought to have,” was eager to recover for himself the authority he had let fall into his mother’s hands; and, supremely, was imbued with profound suspicion of the Spaniards, who, as he believed, had every intention of making themselves masters of Montferrat and the fortress of Casale. Moreover, wrote D’Estrades, he was convinced that the duke would be willing to accept King Louis “to some extent” as his protector.

In this same letter there first occurs the name of Mattioli, whom, as D’Estrades informs the King, he has approached through a mutual acquaintance, a certain Giuliani, with the object of enlisting Mattioli’s services on the French side.

For Mattioli had the ear of Duke Charles as being the one of the favourites most especially admitted to his intimacy. Mattioli was about thirty-six years old, a member of the Mantuan senate and an ex-secretary of state; a successful lawyer, and, it would appear, a boon companion of the duke’s. No one fitter then, considered D’Estrades, than Mattioli to be entrusted, if possible, with the task of persuading his master to let the French take care of Casale for him against the Austrians and Spaniards, who designed to rob him of it. But Mattioli himself must first be sounded, in order that D’Estrades might be as sure of his sentiments towards France as he was of his influence over Duke Charles; hence Giuliani’s mission to Verona, where Mattioli was staying, in October, 1677.

Now from this same despatch of D’Estrades’ to Louis XIV it is evident that he knew Mattioli to have been already engaged in negotiations with the Spaniards in Milan—which was still, for some years, to remain their capital in Upper Italy—and to have been disappointed by them in regard to certain hopes they had led him to entertain.

What those hopes were I do not know, because D’Estrades’ despatch does not go into the details of them; but one can only suppose they must have had to do in some way with Mattioli’s personal advancement or profit—which consideration seems to have weighed, at first, more with him than did that of patriotism. And, if indeed Mattioli’s later conduct can be held to have been inspired by a desire to benefit his country, that conduct is at all events open by its deceitful tortuousness to the worst possible of interpretations.

And so D’Estrades’s agent, Giuliani, came to seek out Mattioli at Verona, under pretence of private business, but in reality that he might win him over to the side of King Louis and so obtain his coÖperation in bringing Duke Charles to the same view of his own interests. To this end Giuliani represented to Mattioli “that the friends of the duke desired greatly to see him in a position of independence; that all his territories and all his revenues were under the absolute control of his mother and the monk, Bulgarini, her confessor, and that Casale and the Montferrat were threatened by all manner of Spanish and other intrigues.”[26]

To this Mattioli answered glibly “that he had long seen the truth” of what Giuliani had laid before him, but “there was still a remedy for so great an evil”; adding that he would speak with the duke on the subject and “discover his real sentiments.”

Once thus launched, the intrigue went merrily forward. The duke was sounded in his turn by Mattioli, and answer was made through the latter to Giuliani and through D’Estrades to Louis XIV that: “The duke approved very much of the proposition that was made him, to free him from the perpetual uneasiness he felt on the score of the Spaniards, and that, for this purpose, Casale should be placed in your Majesty’s hands, upon the understanding that I should try to obtain from you in his favour all that he could reasonably ask for.”

Charles of Mantua’s requirements were as follows:

One hundred thousand pistoles—some forty thousand pounds of English money—in cash, and that Louis should send into Italy a sufficiently strong army “to be able to undertake something considerable”; also, that he, the Duke of Mantua, should have the command of this army “in order to be considered in Italy like the late Duke of Modena, and the late Duke of Mantua, who at his age commanded in chief the Emperor’s army, with the title of Vicar-General of the Empire.”

With this despatch of D’Estrades’ was enclosed a letter from Mattioli to Louis XIV, in which he wrote: “I bless the destiny which procures me the honour of serving so great a monarch, whom I regard and revere as a demigod.” To which the King replied that he thanked the writer, and was greatly obliged to him and would have much pleasure in giving him proofs of his satisfaction upon every occasion. But King Louis did not vouchsafe any answer in the matter of terms until the reception of a further and pressing letter from D’Estrades, to the effect that the Austrians and Spaniards were making ready to seize Casale and all the Montferrat; and that Mantua even was to be occupied by them. This, wrote D’Estrades, he had learned by letter from the Duke of Mantua himself, who, as D’Estrades explained, was so closely watched by Isabella Clara and Father Bulgarini as to make it impossible for him either to declare himself openly for France or to deliver Casale to the French unless King Louis would send into Italy an army strong enough to hold that fortress.

At last, however, after much haggling over the sum to be paid to the duke as the price of Casale (he was finally beaten down to take about twelve thousand pounds, by instalments), everything was agreed to; all that remained to do was to put the agreement into writing and to sign it.

But here the first real difficulty entered into the matter; for, as D’Estrades well knew, it would be utterly impossible, during many months to come, for Louis XIV to send into Italy the soldiers upon whom the duke was relying, to enable him to hold the fortress of Casale for King Louis against his mother and her friends, the Austrians and Spaniards; because all the King’s troops were too badly needed elsewhere.

The Duke of Mantua, however, who was impatient to finish the business, insisted upon sending the faithful Mattioli to Paris at this juncture, to negotiate with the King in person so as to save further delay; to this D’Estrades consented, but at the same time he cast about him for a means of retarding Mattioli’s departure, lest the latter might have none but disappointing news to bring back with him from Paris to Mantua—and so the duke, impetuous and unstable, might be caught on his rebound in the hands of Spain and Austria.

Luckily for D’Estrades, one delay now succeeded to another; the necessity under which Mattioli felt himself of protecting his master against the Spanish blandishments kept him in close attendance on the duke for months; then there followed an illness of the duchess-mother, Isabella Clara, of whose probable demise D’Estrades wrote home with the most beautiful expressions of resignation to the Divine Will: “If God should call her to Himself, the affair would be more easy to conclude.” But it was fated otherwise; the honest, patriotic Austrian woman got well again. Next, it was Mattioli’s own turn to fall ill; and so, from one cause and another, it resulted that he did not reach Paris until the end of November, 1678, when in a private audience with Louis XIV the matter was concluded—twelve thousand pounds were to be paid to the Duke of Mantua, to admit the French into Casale, and he was then to be appointed their commander-in-chief. Mattioli himself was given a ring and a sum of money by way of “pourboire,” together with promises of the royal patronage for his son and of preferment in the Church for his brother, who was a priest. French troops under Boufflers were mobilised at BrianÇon on the frontier of France and Piedmont, and the great Catinat, at that time a simple brigadier, was despatched in all secrecy to Pinerolo, to await their coming.

Simultaneously, Colonel Baron D’Asfeld was sent to Venice, where the Duke of Mantua was spending the winter, there to exchange the ratification of the treaty; he arrived in the January of 1679, and at once informed Pinchesne, the French representative, of his mission. But the duke refused to ratify the treaty until Mattioli, who was still on the way from Paris, should have arrived to give him the benefit of his opinion concerning it; and here, be it noticed, is the first sign of Mattioli’s double-dealing as shown in the extraordinary slowness of his journey home from Paris.

What was the reason of that slowness?—but let us wait and see.

The parts were now reversed; whereas, the French had been formerly anxious for delays, they were now all afire with eagerness to put the business through; whilst the Duke of Mantua and his Mattioli, once so impatient of any hitch in the negotiations, now seemed scarcely interested any longer in the question of Casale. Pressed by D’Asfeld and Pinchesne to promise that he would be at that place by the 20th of February at latest, the duke declined to commit himself; and when he answered them at last through Mattioli (who, on his arrival in Italy, was once more prevented for a time from attending to business by another of his inopportune attacks of illness) Duke Charles sent word to say that he could not possibly get to Casale before the 10th of March, urging three separate reasons for his inability to do so. These were: That he had not sufficient funds for such a journey; that he was unwilling to leave his heir-presumptive, Don Vincenzo Gonzaga, behind at Mantua at such a crisis; and “the obligation he found himself under of holding a sort of carousal with several Venetian gentlemen.” Could anything be more frankly careless than this last; more plainly indicative of the fact that Duke Charles, disappointed by the smallness of the monetary advantage proffered him in return for the control of Casale, was either desirous of obtaining more by giving an impression of indifference in the matter, or else, that he was genuinely indifferent, by reason of the knowledge that Mattioli was even at that moment (and by preconcerted arrangement with himself) displaying the political wares so undervalued by Louis XIV to other and more generous purchasers along the road from Paris to Venice?

And yet the French agents, at this stage of things, still reported their unshaken belief that the duke had every intention of remaining true to their master in Paris!

Meanwhile, the massing of the French troops over against the Piedmontese frontier was causing consternation throughout Northern Italy. Duke Charles even received “representations” from the Spanish and Austrian ministers at Mantua, protesting violently against the news they had heard from Turin—“that he wished to give Casale and the Montferrat to the King of France.” To which the ingenuous Charles returned a flat denial, expressing some mild wonder at their excellencies’ credulousness! All was now suspicion and anger, and veiled threats for Duke Charles from both sides; couriers were being sent off at top-speed to Vienna and Madrid, and even to Venice, with the news of Charles’ projected “deal” with the French; whilst Pinchesne and D’Asfeld pressed him, without mercy or intermission, to betake himself to Casale, there to wait for the French troops and to hand over the keys of the place to them on their arrival. At last he agreed to do this; at the same time, D’Asfeld and Mattioli were to meet at IncrÉa, not far from Casale, and to exchange the ratifications of the treaty—this, I fancy, by the duke’s stipulation, seeing that both Mattioli and D’Asfeld were in Venice with the treaty in their pockets. This eccentric provision seems to prove all the more clearly, in the light of subsequent events, that Duke Charles was perfectly aware of those events, and that he had no intention whatever of binding himself to Louis XIV by any signed instrument that might afterwards be held against him by that person.

The duke then was to be at Casale by the 15th of March; and Mattioli was to meet D’Asfeld at IncrÉa on the 9th of the same month.

And then, all at once, it was learned that D’Asfeld, marching to keep his appointment with Mattioli, had been arrested by the Spanish Government in the Duchy of Milan, which he was obliged to cross to reach the rendezvous at IncrÉa; on the other hand, neither Duke Charles nor Mattioli had as yet left Mantua for Casale or for IncrÉa—although the latter was the first to send the news of D’Asfeld’s arrest to the French agents, D’Estrades at Turin and Pinchesne at Venice. It was now the end of the month of March, and those same French agents were beginning to entertain the strongest suspicions of Mattioli himself.

April passed away and still the business remained stationary, while those suspicions increased to a straining-point—and then on May Day, 1679, the storm broke.

The whole of the proposed cession of Casale was made known, simultaneously at Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Milan, and Venice; at one and the same time, the representative of each state announced his perfect knowledge of the entire transaction to Monsieur de Pomponne, the French minister for foreign affairs!