Bastille; Latude, Henri Masers de, 1725-1805; Mattioli, Ercole Antonio, conte, 1640-1703
"Thursday, September 18 (1698), at three o'clock in the afternoon, M. de
Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastille, made his first
appearance, coming from his governorship of the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite-Honorat, bringing with him, in his conveyance, a
prisoner he had formerly at Pignerol, whom he caused to be always
masked, whose name is not mentioned; directly he got out of the carriage
he put him in the first room of the Bazinière tower, waiting till night
for me to take him, at nine o'clock, and put him with M. de Rosarges,
one of the sergeants brought by the governor, alone in the third room of
the Bertaudière tower, which I had had furnished with all necessaries
some days before his arrival, having received orders to that effect from
M. de Saint-Mars: the which prisoner will be looked after and waited on
by M. de Rosarges, and maintained by the governor."
In a second register, supplementary to the first, in which du Junca
records details of the liberation or the death of the prisoners, we
read, under date November 19, 1703:--
"On the same day, November 19, 1703, the unknown prisoner, always masked
with a mask of black velvet, whom M. de Saint-Mars, the governor,
brought with him on coming from the Isles de Sainte-Marguerite, whom he
had kept for a long time, the which happening to be a little ill
yesterday on coming from mass, he died to-day, about ten o'clock at
night, without having had a serious illness; it could not have been
slighter. M. Giraut, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday, is surprised
at his death. He did not receive the sacrament, and our chaplain
exhorted him a moment before he died. And this unknown prisoner, kept
here for so long, was buried on Tuesday at four o'clock p.m., November
20, in the graveyard of St. Paul, our parish; on the register of burial
he was given a name also unknown. M. de Rosarges, major, and Arreil,
surgeon, signed the register."
And in the margin:--
"I have since learnt that they called him M. de Marchiel on the
register, and that forty livres was the cost of the funeral."
The registers of du Junca were preserved among the ancient archives of
the Bastille, whence they passed to the Arsenal library, where they are
now kept. They are drawn up in the clumsy handwriting of a soldier, with
little skill in penmanship. The spelling is bad. But the facts are
stated with precision, and have always proved accurate when checked.
[Illustration: Notice in Du Junca's Journal of the death of the masked
prisoner in the Bastille (November 19, 1703).]
The extract from the second register shows that the mysterious
prisoner wore, not a mask of iron, but one of black velvet.
Further, the entry on the register of St. Paul's church has been
discovered. It reads:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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