The Man Behind the Iron Mask (30 page)

Roux, however, soon found another confidant, a dissident Frenchman who went by the name of Veyras and who like himself was a Protestant from the Languedoc. On a previous visit to England, this man had called himself Portail, but he had been deported then for subversive talk and was using a different name to avoid being recognized by the authorities. Both as Portail and as Veyras he had made debts and enemies enough to get himself rearrested, but he lived a charmed life, protected by Lord Orrery. Roux brought him into the ring with Balthazar and his fellow-conspirators; he brought Roux into the circle of Orrery and his fellow-intriguers. Orrery was popular at court as a writer of plays in the heroic French manner, and his work was admired by the Duke of Buckingham who also wrote for the stage, but his prowess in heroic verse was nothing compared to his valour in politics. Though he had been a confidential adviser to Cromwell, he had become a privy-councillor to Charles II. Buckingham, who was the son of Charles I's favourite and himself a favourite of Charles II, was a riotous, pleasure-loving character and Orrery had exploited this to make himself one of his closest friends. Buckingham's political views were vague and easily influenced; Orrery's were clear cut and convincingly expressed: in his view it was in the English interest to join forces with the Dutch in a war against Louis XIV.

Roux had meetings with the Dutch ambassador as well as the Spanish ambassador, with Buckingham as well as Arlington, and his tactics changed accordingly. Though still secretly financed by Catholic Spain, he now proposed a league of exclusively Protestant states to defend and protect the Protestants of France. On 26 December he had dinner with the Dutch ambassador and the next day drew up a report for Arlington. He argued that if he were to attend the General Diet of the Swiss Confederation on 25 January, armed with letters from Charles II and accompanied by Colonel Balthazar, he could bring the Swiss Cantons into the existing alliance between England, Holland and Sweden, on the new understanding that they would invade France to aid a Protestant insurrection. Buckingham and possibly Arlington were sympathetic in principle to the idea of a more foreceful league against France, but Charles II certainly was not. He was already in secret contact with Louis XIV about the possibility of using French troops to restore Catholicism to England and, at a meeting held on the very day that the Swiss Diet met, he shared the secret with his brother, James, and three ministers, Arlington, Arundel and Clifford. Buckingham's absence from that meeting was a clear sign that the King did not fully trust him, and Arlington, whatever his proper feelings on the matter, was opportunist enough to give his support. Thus, while Roux was hoping to persuade the English to join a Protestant league against France, Charles II and his closest ministers, including Arlington, were secretly planning a Catholic alliance with her. Roux did not leave England for Switzerland again until the beginning of March, but he was wasting his time; his plans were no further forward when he left than they had been the year before.

The French, meanwhile, had lost track of Roux completely. After Balthazar's report in early September they had nothing to go on for six months, until on 6 March someone passed the word to Paris that he was in London. The informant, however, had played the same trick as Balthazar: Roux by a strange coincidence had just left for Brussels. Lionne, unaware of his informant's duplicity, wrote at once to Croissy in London to tell him what he had learned – that Roux was staying with Gerard in Covent Garden and was planning to return to Switzerland in the near future. Croissy soon discovered that Roux was not in Covent Garden, but it took him more than a month to find out that he had been staying in Chandos Street and had long since left. On 27 April, before his full report had reached Paris, Lionne got news from the Franche Comté that Roux had reappeared at Saint-Claude.

The informant this time was almost certainly a Catholic priest by the name of Ragny, who although French was a member of the religious community at the Abbey of Saint-Claude. Ragny had come to know Roux at the time of his first visit, when for his own reasons the priest had set out to win his confidence. For some years Roux had assumed the noble name of Marcilly and Ragny, whose father's mother had been a Marcilly, was curious to know by what right he made such a claim. Roux always pretended to have acquired the name with the purchase of one of the Marcilly estates near Orléans, but he was lying. Ragny resented the usurpation, particularly when he saw the kind of man Roux was. To get at the truth of the visitor's pretensions, he had played the convivial reprobate, which an anti-Catholic like Roux could despise and enjoy as a typical example of the age-old corruption of the Church (although the fact that Roux did not suspect Ragny's true hostility may suggest that the rôle of gourmandizing monk was sufficiently close to his actual character to make it easy for him to play). Roux in his usual fashion had wished to make an impression and Ragny soon heard enough of his hothead-talk to destroy him. Sometime towards the end of 1668 he was in touch with French intelligence, possibly with La Grange, and at the beginning of 1669 was contacted by a French agent named Mazel.

Captain in the light cavalry and equerry to Maréchal Turenne, Mazel had already proved his abilities as a special agent on a secret mission in 1667. His background made him a perfect choice to lead the commando squad assigned to kidnap Roux. He had been born and raised in Calvisson, Roux's own village near Nîmes, was the godson of Roux's own niece, and knew the man personally. He was moreover a Protestant, eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the regime by thwarting the subversive intentions of Protestants like Roux. A legal expert, barrister and doctor of law, he could also be counted upon to effect a kidnapping on foreign territory as discreetly as possible. The commando squad were all Protestants from the same cavalry regiment and included Mazel's elder brother. Their plan was to use Ragny to capture Roux the next time he appeared in the Franche Comté.

Soon after Roux arrived at Saint-Claude he realized that he was being followed, and at the beginning of May he moved to Balthazar's house at Prangins. Ragny wrote to him there inviting him to a party at the home of another priest at Les Rousses just north of Saint-Claude near the French border. Ragny's valet brought the letter and stayed to act as Roux's guide. Early on the morning of Sunday 12 May, Roux left Prangins on horseback with Ragny's valet and one of the two lackeys he had brought with him from England. At the Saint-Cergue pass, on the mountain road from Nyon, he was ambushed by Mazel and his men. Ragny's valet, thinking the attackers highwaymen, put up a fight and was shot. The lackey fled and Roux himself was taken. His captors tied his wrists to the pommel of his saddle, his ankles under the belly of his horse, and hurried him off at a gallop, leaving Ragny's valet for dead on the road. As the group passed under the walls of Bonmont Abbey, Roux began to shout for help and had to be gagged. The Swiss gave chase, but the frontier was crossed without incident; that night Roux was securely lodged in France, locked up in the fort at Ecluse, six miles from Bellegarde. Ragny's valet meanwhile had been found alive and taken back to Nyon, but died some days later. Ragny himself had made his escape from Saint-Claude just half an hour before troops arrived to arrest him. On 14 May, Roux was in prison in Lyon and on 17 May a general order was issued to assist his transfer to the Bastille.

Balthazar at first wished to pretend to the French that Roux had merely visited him on his way from somewhere else, but Roux told his captors that all his papers were at Balthazar's house. He persuaded Mazel to let him write a letter to Balthazar, asking him to send documents he had which proved that he was an envoy of the English. Mazel took the letter with Roux to Paris, but sent some of his men to Gex to prepare a raid on Prangins. Balthazar, warned of their intention, burned all the papers he had and went into hiding. Meanwhile the Council of Berne, in whose territory the abduction had taken place, was highly indignant. The kidnappers were cited before a tribunal and condemned to death by default. The significance of this was purely formal, but the judgement was posted on the door of Turenne's house in Paris, and he was sufficiently put out by it to send his secretary around the embassies to sound out the general feeling. The English ambassador also received a visit from the Spanish ambassador who insisted that he intercede for Roux but, knowing nothing of the man except what he had heard from the French, he refused. On 25 May, Louis XIV wrote to Croissy announcing Roux's capture and instructing him to deliver the news in person to Charles II and his ministers, starting with Arlington. He was to observe their faces carefully for any sign of discomfort or alarm, and to report back in detail. The English, however, were ready for Croissy. They intercepted the letter, deciphered it and summoned the ambassador to Whitehall to tell him the news, three days before they allowed the letter to reach him. Charles II met him in private. Having announced that a Frenchman named Roux, who claimed to be an envoy from England, had been arrested by the French in Switzerland, the king informed him that Roux had never been commissioned by the English to do anything whatsoever, not even to treat the question of the regicides in Switzerland; and that Arlington, who had met the man and listened to what he had to say, had considered him altogether untrustworthy and had merely given him a little money to be rid of him.

Roux persisted in the claim that he was employed by Charles II and professed to have things of such importance to say that he could reveal them to no one but Louis XIV. Lionne was sent to interrogate him in the Bastille, but days of questioning achieved nothing of relevance, except Lionne's private conviction that the man was mentally deranged. Rumours began to circulate that the French had nothing with which to charge Roux, and were going to put him on trial for some trumped-up crime of forgery or rape supposedly committed many years before in Nîmes. On 5 June the process of interrogation was handed over to magistrates of the criminal court and, after a week or so, Roux's spirit began to break. Meanwhile Lionne heard from Croissy that Roux's former valet in London, a Frenchman called Martin, might be useful as a witness; on 12 June, he replied that the man would be well-rewarded if he returned to France to give evidence. Mazel had been kept in Paris for that purpose, as had Ragny who, by way of recompense for the service he had rendered the King and compensation for the loss of his place at Saint-Claude, had already been given a pension of 3,000 livres.

On 14 June, Roux claimed to be ill, unable to urinate and in pain. The interrogation was suspended until a physician had examined him and decided that he was lying. On 17 June, he refused to eat, but the interrogation continued nevertheless, with a confrontation between him and Ruvigny and questions on information just received by Lionne from Croissy concerning his relationship with Veyras. On 20 June, he tried to commit suicide. Using a broken knife bought from one of the guards, he severed his genitals. His intention was to let himself bleed to death without the guards becoming aware, and as a pretext for any blood they might notice he also severed the little finger of his left hand. The guards did notice the blood and, finding a great deal of it, called the governor. Roux then pretended that he had passed a stone in his urine and some of the blood was a consequence of that. The prison governor had him stripped, saw the wound and called a surgeon to cauterize it. The bleeding was stopped, but loss of blood along with lack of food had left him so weak that there was a serious danger he might die before he could be judged. A hurried trial was held the next day, and judgement delivered the day after. Charged with high treason against State and King, Roux was found guilty and condemned to death. His execution took place that afternoon.

At 1 p.m. on Saturday 22 June 1669, he was brought haggard and fainting through the crowds which packed the square in front of the Grand Châtelet law courts and, on a scaffold there, was stripped and bound face-upwards across the executioner's wheel. Stretched out to be killed, he lay shivering and panting while a magistrate read his sentence and a priest urged him to repent; then he begged the comfort of a Protestant minister. This was forbidden by government edict, but when his request was refused he raised his voice in such a powerful outburst of vilification that a minister was sent for. He lay in silence then until the minister's arrival, at which he lifted his head and spoke out clearly, declaring that he was ready to die patiently like a good Christian. The minister pressed him to acknowledge his crimes, but Roux swore that he had never contrived nor wished evil against the person of the King and that in all his dealings with foreign governments he had never sought anything but the welfare of his fellow-Protestants. The minister was allowed to pray with him a while, then made to withdraw and leave him to his executioners, who went to work immediately with iron bars, breaking the bones of his legs, arms and back. After eleven blows, they left him to die. The priest exhorted him in his final agony to abjure his religion, but he reviled the King for his cruelty instead and could be silenced only with a gag. He was two hours dying. At four o'clock his body was taken down from the wheel, dragged through the streets at the tail of a cart and thrown onto a refuse-dump.

Two days later Croissy, who did not learn of Roux's execution until 1 July, was still trying to persuade Roux's valet, Martin, to go to Paris to give evidence. He had his secretary talk to the man about it, but without success. Martin did not like Roux and for reasons of his own had left his service, but he professed to know nothing of Roux's political involvements. In Crossy's view, he knew more than he was prepared to say. His pretence at ignorance was due, Croissy thought, to the fact that he had a wife and family in London, and did not want to take any risks. What seemed to frighten him was the possibility that the French authorities would assume he knew more than he did and once he was in their hands would keep him there. Croissy was sure that Martin could not be persuaded to go to France of his own accord and thought the best way to get him there was to have him deported. In a letter to Lionne, written on 1 July, just before he received the news from him of Roux's execution, he proposed asking Charles II to have both Martin and Veyras arrested and sent to Calais. In a postscript, acknowledging receipt of Lionne's news about Roux, he declared that he was nonetheless waiting for instructions concerning the arrest of Roux's accomplice, Veyras.