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Introduction
When in 1660 King Charles II quitted the French court and returned to England, the parliamentary restraints laid upon him left Louis XIV aghast, and the ‘Sun King’ made sure to radiate his power through a network of chosen ministers, soldiers, civil servants and innumerable spies. Many illustrious names were gaoled without appeal or hope of release, but the most famous prisoner has no name at all.
AN arrival at the Bastille, September, 1698, has been the cause of more French discussion than any other event in the notable history of that fortress. It was Thursday, 18th of the month, and three of the afternoon. Armed men on horseback surrounded a closed litter, from which, when all was sure, descended a meagre, silent figure, Saint-Mars,* Louis XIV’s most trusted gaoler. He had come to the Bastille for the first time, having just received its command.
The entry of a new governor would naturally be of no small moment to the staff, whose future lay between his hands; but curiosity was immediately transferred from Saint-Mars to the prisoner who accompanied him. The prisoner’s face was hidden by a mask of black velvet,* a disguise in which no one had ever before been brought to the Bastille.
* Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars (?-1708). He was governor of the prison at Pignerol (Pinerolo) near Turin until 1681, when he was appointed commander of the nearby Exilles Fort, and then governor of Fort Royal on Île Sainte-Marguerite, neighbour of Île Saint-Honorat in the Sea of Provence near Cannes, from 1687. He held the post at the Bastille in Paris until his death in 1708.
* Official correspondence and eyewitness testimony spoke of a mask of black velvet; when the Bastille’s doctors examined the patient, they were grudgingly allowed to raise the lower part to examine his tongue. Then Voltaire stepped in with his historical study Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), in which he recorded the masked man’s journey to Fort Royal, and stated that “This prisoner, on the road, wore a mask, whose chin strap had steel springs [ressorts d’acier], which gave him the freedom to eat with the mask on his face”. A century later, in Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Man in the Iron Mask (1847-50), the velvet mask has become “a vizor of polished steel [une visière d’acier bruni], soldered to a helmet of the same nature, which altogether enveloped the whole of his head.”
Précis
In 1698, Louis XIV appointed his trusted lieutenant Saint-Mars as governor of the Bastille. Saint-Mars duly came from Fort Royal in Provence to Paris, bringing with him under close guard a prisoner remembered neither for his name nor his crime, both of which are a mystery to this day, but for the mask he always wore. (56 / 60 words)
In 1698, Louis XIV appointed his trusted lieutenant Saint-Mars as governor of the Bastille. Saint-Mars duly came from Fort Royal in Provence to Paris, bringing with him under close guard a prisoner remembered neither for his name nor his crime, both of which are a mystery to this day, but for the mask he always wore.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, despite, just, may, or, otherwise, until, whereas.
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