The Iron Mask and the Storming of the Bastille

14 July 1789 marks the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. The following week saw the publication of a broadsheet relating the story of a lucky prisoner, the comte de Lorges, who had been rescued by the rioters.

However, news quickly emerged of another prisoner who was not so lucky. This was the infamous Man in the Iron Mask, who was said to have been 'found by the Nation this 22 July 1789'. Rioters claimed to have discovered a skeleton lying on the floor of one of the cells. An iron mask lay by its side, and the prisoner was identified by an inscription which:

'gave his name as the Surintentant Foucquet, who was taken from the Isles Sainte-Marguerite and conducted with an iron mask into the fort[ress] of the Bastille in the time of the reign of Louis XIV and died under the reign of Louis XV and found in the reign of Louis XVI the 22 July 1789.'

As it was, Nicolas Foucquet was not the Man in the Iron Mask, although he did have some connection with that mysterious prisoner. Foucquet was never held on the Isles Sainte-Marguerite nor did he live long enough to go with the marquis de Saint-Mars when he took his famous prisoner with him upon his transfer to the Bastille. Foucquet's death at Pignerol on 23 March 1680 is well attested, but, by the time of the Revolution, his story had become a useful piece of propaganda to be used against tyrannical monarchy, and it inspired the account written in the broadsheet.