On This Day - November 19th 1703
The legendary 'Man in the Iron Mask' dies.
The Man in the Iron Mask has spawned many myths and legends over time. One of the more factual accounts of the unknown French prisoner comes from the journal of Lieutenant Etienne du Junca, an official of the Bastille from October 1690 until his death in September 1706. Du Junca recorded that when a new governor of the Bastille arrived on 18 September 1698, he brought with him a prisoner wearing a black velvet (not iron) mask, and whose name was not disclosed to anyone. The new governor, Bénigne d'Auvergne de Saint-Mars, had kept the masked man in custody since at least the beginning of his own governorship at Pignerol, from 1665.
The masked man was always treated well, and evinced no complaints. When the prisoner died on 19 November 1703, Saint-Mars had the name "Marchialy" inscribed in the parish register. However, spelling of the day being purely as the inscriber perceived it, there was no way to know what the man's name truly was. After his death, stories of the man in the mask became more and more exaggerated. By the time the writer Voltaire had developed the story in 1751, the mask was said to be riveted on, with a "movable, hinged lower jaw held in place by springs that made it possible to eat wearing it." There were even rumours that, after the storming of the bastille in 1789, a skeleton was found with an iron mask still attached. Such stories have been found to be pure fabrication, and more scientific attempts have been used to try to determine the man's name and the reason for his imprisonment: to date, he remains shrouded in mystery.