The Man Behind the Iron Mask (29 page)

NOTES

1
.   
Dauger or Danger
: traditionally the name has been read as Dauger and that is why, for the sake of convenience, I use that reading here.

2
.   
Blainvilliers
: Zachèe de Biot de Blainvilliers, the son of Saint-Mars' uncle and foster-father, Gilles de Biot de Blainvilliers. He was a former musketeer who had accompanied Saint-Mars to Pignerol as one of four lieutenants in his
compagnie franche.
When Saint-Mars moved to Exiles, he was transferred to Metz as major of the citadel. On his death, Saint-Mars inherited the estate of Blainvilliers which on the death of Saint-Mars was inherited by Joseph de Formanior, the man referred to by Palteau as Blainvilliers.

9

DUNKIRK CONNECTIONS

I
t has been argued that the name ‘Eustache Dauger' was not the mysterious prisoner's true name. Prison names were usually single, a surname or a nickname, as Matthioli at Pignerol was called ‘Lestang' and Protestant ministers on Sainte-Marguerite were called ‘Songster' and ‘Scribbler'. According to Palteau, Dauger was known by the nickname ‘Tower' among the prison staff, and in the course of his thirty-four years as a prisoner he had a number of code-names: ‘the prisoner from Provence', ‘the longtime prisoner', one of ‘the prisoners of the Lower Tower' and ‘the prisoner brought by Captain de Vauroy'. The fact that ‘Eustache Dauger' appears to be a complete name, both forename and surname together, does give the impression of authenticity, but arguably it was after all just an invention. Since the reason for the man's imprisonment was so secret and the security measures surrounding him so thorough, it is highly unlikely, so the argument runs, that those who imprisoned him would ever have risked using his true name. As one writer puts it: ‘Whatever the man's real name may have been, we may be quite sure it had no resemblance to “Eustache Dauger”.'

If ‘Eustache Dauger' was a prison pseudonym, then the field of inquiry is open to any man of any name who might conceivably have disappeared in the region of Dunkirk in late July or early August 1669. The first candidate fulfilling those conditions was offered in 1903 by Andrew Lang in a book entitled
The Valet's Tragedy and Other Studies
. Like investigators before him, he had followed a line of enquiry first suggested by Théodore Jung, but his contribution was altogether new. Jung had proposed various possible solutions to the mystery of Eustache Dauger's arrest, one of which was that it could be found ‘in the records of the trial of Roux de Marcilly, and in the dispatches of the French Ambassador to England'. For the trial in question, no official record survives, but Lang pieced together what information he could find and, in his own words, ‘pushed the inquiry into a source neglected by the French historians, namely the correspondence of the English ambassadors, agents and statesmen for the years 1668, 1669.' Today a more detailed account than his exists, published in 1969 by Aimé-Daniel Rabinel in a book entitled
La Tragique Aventure de Roux de Marcilly
. For a proper appreciation of the candidate discovered by Lang, the story of Roux as given by Rabinel should first be told.

In April 1668, a Frenchman calling himself Claude Roux de Marcilly, a Protestant from Nîmes in the Languedoc, arrived in London and took up lodging at a small hotel run by a Swiss wine-merchant in Chandos Street near Oxford Circus. The name of the hotel was ‘The Loyal Subject', which ironically Claude Roux was not. France was at war with Spain for possession of the Franche Comté and the Spanish Netherlands, and Roux had just come from Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, with a letter of introduction from the governor there to the Spanish ambassador in London. He was an unimpressive, unattractive man in his late forties, his hair black turning grey, his clothes soberly cut in greys and browns. Usually he kept to the hotel during the day and went out only in the evening. He called at government offices in Whitehall, or at the Spanish and Austrian embassies, and made regular visits to a French wine-merchant called Gerard, whose shop in Covent Garden he used as a mailing address for correspondence with Geneva and Paris. Occasionally he also met an Englishman named Samuel Morland who was a scientist and inventor, well-known for his experiments in hydrostatics and hydraulics and reputed to be one of the foremost engineers of the day.

It was not the cause of science which attracted Roux to the Englishman. Thirteen years before, Morland had taken part in a diplomatic mission sent by Cromwell to the Duke of Savoy to plead against the persecution of the Waldensian
¹
population there and had distinguished himself enough in the Protestant cause to be kept on in the region afterwards as chargé d'affaires in Geneva. His turning to science had coincided with the return of the monarchy to England and the termination in consequence of his career in the diplomatic service, but his genius for survival was not restricted to scientific accomplishments. Among his many achievements was the fact that, after serving as a secret agent for Cromwell, he had managed to engineer himself a pardon from Charles II by providing a list of his fellow-spies. At the science of double-cross he was unusually inventive, and towards the end of May, having heard a little of what Roux had to say about his reasons for being in London, he invited the Frenchman to his home for dinner so that they could be alone together and talk freely.

Roux arrived in the late afternoon and stayed until the early morning. Morland was a generous host and a good listener. He put his guest at ease and got him to talk, showed understanding and admiration, made sympathetic remarks and asked questions. Roux, who enjoyed talking about himself, was delighted to have such an appreciative audience and spoke out with reckless confidence. His audience, however, was larger than he suspected. Henri de Ruvigny, the French ambassador, had also been invited. He had arrived shortly before Roux and was hidden in a curtained closet where he could watch and listen without being discovered, comfortably seated with pen and paper provided by his host to take notes of all that was said.

Roux gave him plenty to write about. He was, he explained, the special envoy of a secret political organization known as the Committee of Ten which had its headquarters in Geneva and was dedicated to the overthrow of Louis XIV and his government. A revolution in France was imminent; he personally had spent the last ten years working to achieve it. There were any number of Frenchmen ready to assassinate Louis XIV and countless numbers of French Protestants eager to revolt and set up a republic. The Languedoc, Provence, Dauphiné, Guyenne, Poitou, Brittany and Normandy: all were armed and prepared. However, to be sure of success they needed outside assistance. England, Holland and Sweden were already leagued in a defensive pact against France. What the Committee of Ten wanted was to extend this alliance to include Switzerland, Spain and Austria, with a military commitment to support such a revolution. The Swiss Cantons had shown themselves favourable to the idea, and Roux's mission for the last two months had been to persuade the Spanish and the English to participate. He was having frequent meetings with Lord Arlington,
²
the English minister, and with the Spanish and Austrian ambassadors. To them, however, he had made no mention of a future French republic. In return for their military backing, they had been led to believe that all the territory lost by Spain to France since 1630 would be handed back and that the sovereignty of all the rebel provinces would be given to England, to be shared between Charles II and his brother James. The Spanish had already pledged their support and were assisting Roux with passports and money. The English for the moment were holding back, but if necessary the revolution would go ahead without them.

Morland seemed impressed and Roux, who liked to be impressive, pressed his advantage. He knew Louis XIV personally, he said, and had met him in private many times. He also knew Monsieur, the King's brother. In fact he was so well known that it was something of a disadvantage. In all the time he had been in London he had not dared to go out during the day for fear of meeting Ruvigny who would be sure to recognize him. Spying through his closet-curtain, Ruvigny did not recognize Roux as anyone he had ever seen before, but though these claims to personal significance and social grandeur were an obvious pretence or delusion, they did not discount the real importance of what the man had to say. Morland, primed beforehand, fished for Roux's secret contacts and extracted the names of two members of the Committee of Ten: Colonel Balthazar, a former officer in the French army, and Count Dohna, a former governor of Orange;
³
the names of his correspondents in Paris and Geneva; and the date and route of his return to Geneva – leaving 1 June by way of Brussels and the French border-towns of Charleville and Sedan.

Roux took his leave, altogether unaware that his host had betrayed him; and Ruvigny lost no time getting off a full report to Lionne, the Foreign Minister in Paris, so that the governors of Charleville and Sedan could be alerted in good time to expect Roux and arrest him. As it was, Roux delayed his departure until the beginning of July because the English were beginning to show an interest in opening negotiations with the Swiss, and because the Spanish governor in Brussels was being replaced; he wished to meet the new man before reporting back to Geneva. When finally he left, he was carrying a passport issued by the English authorities for a journey to Switzerland. He also held letters of introduction and credit from the Spanish and Austrian ambassadors to officials of the Franche Comté, including the Spanish governor in Besançon. On 1 August, while the French were still waiting for him to show up in Sedan or Charleville, he arrived in Switzerland with an imposing protector: Chief Justice Borrey of the Franche Comté, who accompanied him and paid his expenses.

As a first condition to an alliance with the Swiss, the English wanted them to extradite the English Parliamentarians who had voted the death-sentence of Charles I. At the time of the Restoration, these men had taken refuge in various European countries and all except those in the Swiss Cantons had since been extradited to face the charge of regicide. Roux, who to see Louis XIV executed was quite prepared to sacrifice the executioners of Charles I, went to Zurich, Berne and Geneva to argue for their extradition. Balthazar, as well as Borrey, went with him, and while he was in Switzerland he was Balthazar's guest at his home in Prangins near Nyon on Lake Geneva.

The French ambassador at Solothurn in Switzerland reported to Lionne on 10 August that a mysterious Frenchman from England was discussing an Anglo-Swiss alliance in Zurich and on 7 September that this same Frenchman had travelled through Switzerland with Borrey and was last heard of staying at Saint-Claude, forty miles from Geneva in the Franche Comté. That the man at Saint-Claude was the unsaintly Claude Roux was established beyond question for Lionne by a descripton of the man furnished by the ambassador's informant in Zurich. On 23 September, a Guards officer named La Grange was despatched with a dozen men to hunt down and capture Roux whereever he might be, in or out of France, but by the time he crossed the frontier into the Franche Comté, his quarry had vanished without trace. By a strange coincidence, Roux had left Saint-Claude at the very moment the ambassador had got news that he was there.

The coincidence was no accident. The ambassador's information was supplied by two agents: one in Zurich who knew nothing about Roux and had difficulty learning anything, and one in Geneva who knew everything about Roux and would have had difficulty hiding it. The informant in Geneva was Roux's friend and host Balthazar: an intelligence agent for France as well as a member of the Committee of Ten, he was playing a double game like Morland, but in this case to the advantage of Roux. Balthazar was a wealthy Swiss national of German origin who had served in the Swedish, French and Palatinate armies before settling in Switzerland. People who did not like him said that his money had been made out of pillage and malversation. Probably he had been working for French intelligence since his retirement from the French army thirteen years before, and as recently as January he had served as ambassador-extraordinary for France on a mission to the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in northern Germany. Not until Ruvigny heard him named as a member of the Committee of Ten did the French have any reason to suspect that he was a double agent and whatever Lionne thought of Roux's disclosure he had not passed it on to the ambassador at Solothurn.

Balthazar, unaware that in Paris his double rôle was known, continued to put on a show. Sooner or later, he realized, the ambassador would learn something about Roux's visit to Geneva, and silence from him on such a matter would seem odd. Late in August, therefore, he supplied the ambassador with vague and misleading information about three strangers in the area, who he thought were envoys from Sweden, Holland and England, having meetings with the governor of the Franche Comté. He promised to investigate the matter further and make a full report. However, by 31 August the ambassador had still heard nothing more from him and wrote to Lionne to ask if perhaps Balthazar had sent his report directly to Paris. It was only after another week's delay that the report finally appeared, and in it Roux's name was not given. He was simply described as ‘a Frenchman who changes his name often and claims to have been sent from England'. The other two men were identified as Borrey and the superintendant of finance at the Abbey of Saint-Claude. The Frenchman, Balthazar declared, was staying at Saint-Claude. In fact, Roux had just left.

It was two or three months before Roux was back in England. From the Franche Comté he went to Nancy in the Duchy of Lorraine for secret talks with the Duke,
⁴
whose enmity to Louis XIV was no secret, and from there to Brussels and possibly Holland. By the end of November he was certainly in London, staying once again at ‘The Loyal Subject', and well-established with a secretary, a valet and two lackeys. The French, in the meantime, were still looking for him in Switzerland and the Franche Comté. If Morland knew he had returned, and presumably Roux contacted him soon after his arrival to let him know, then he tried his best to avoid him and made no attempt to inform the French embassy. Ruvigny had been recalled to Paris and Morland was refusing all contact with his successor, Croissy.
⁵
Morland lived in fear of his life. Ironically, one of his servants had turned out to be an English government agent and had reported his involvement with both Ruvigny and Roux. He had been questioned about them, his letters had been opened and he was being followed.