[Gutenberg 42419] • The True History of the State Prisoner, commonly called the Iron Mask / Extracted from Documents in the French Archives

I was led to undertake the following Narrative by the perusal of a work, lately published at Paris, entitled “Histoire de L’Homme au Masque de Fer, par J. Delort;” in which the name of that state prisoner is most clearly and satisfactorily ascertained, by means of authentic documents.

Under these circumstances, it may be asked why I was not contented to leave the question, thus set at rest, in the hands of M. Delort, who had the original merit of the discovery:—to this I would answer, that M. Delort’s part of the book struck me as peculiarly ill arranged and confused; besides being unnecessarily filled with the most fulsome flattery of Lewis the Fourteenth, never, certainly, more inappropriately bestowed, than while in the act of recording one of the most cruel and oppressive acts of that Sovereign’s cruel and oppressive reign.

I have also thought, that the subject was one of sufficient historical curiosity to interest the English public.

For these reasons, I have been induced to throw together the following chain of evidence upon the subject, making use of the same documents as M. Delort, to which I have added some others previously published, and printing the whole series in an Appendix.