Iron Mask
Iron Mask, Man in the, a mysterious state prisoner of France during the reign of Louis XIV. In 1698 he was transferred from a prison in Piedmont to the Bastille. At that time he wore a mask of black velvet, but in later accounts it was called an iron mask. The prisoner died in 1703. He was buried under the name of Marchioly or Marchiali and was described as aged about 45. His identity has never been satisfactorily established.
Voltaire believed the Man in the Iron Mask was an illegitimate half-brother of Louis XIV. According to another common theory, the man was Louis's twin brother; this idea was popularized in the elder Alexandre Dumas' novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848), part of which later appeared in English as The Man in the Iron Mask. A more likely theory is that the prisoner was Count Mattioli, an Italian diplomat seized by French agents in 1679 and imprisoned for treachery.