Pignerol the town of the Iron Mask

Located about sixty kilometers west of Turin, the capital of Piedmont, the small Piedmontese town at the foot of the Alps retains only a few testimonies of its French past, survivors of the earthquake of April 1808.

By Lionel Marquis, journalist

On March 31, 1630, for the second time, the armies of the King of France entered Pignerol. The first was almost a century earlier, at the time of François I, and it lasted from 1536 to 1574 with Marshal de Lesdiguières (1).

This time, this occupation was the work of Marshal Richelieu and the indirect consequence of the Thirty Years' War which had ravaged the German countries for twelve years, and the war of succession to the Duchy of Mantua (2). It was revenge for the French, who had tried, a few years earlier, to seize the city. But the rapid reaction of Ortensia di Piossasco, wife of Governor Carlo di Rivara, Count of Valperga, had deprived them of this victory.

Pignerol taken, a treaty is signed with the very young Duke of Savoy, Victor-Amédée I (3). The latter, in exchange for Montferrat and its “capital” Casale, cedes Pignerol to France. It was the beginning of a French presence that would last nearly seventy years, from 1630 to 1696. This second French occupation, which began gloriously under Louis XIII, ended pitifully under Louis XIV. During this period, Pignerol, the extreme limit of French territory in Piedmont, continued to gain importance in the eyes of Louis XIV, who wanted to make it a “fortress of the first rank”. At its peak, the city garrisoned 15,000 men, far more than the population, which was decimated by the plague of 1630.

A short seat

The capture of the city was rapid. A fortnight was enough to receive the surrender of the seven hundred men of the garrison and its governor, Umberto di Piossasco. The siege was carried out masterfully by Richelieu himself and Marshal Schomberg (4) who, having descended to the plain by the Montgenèvre, fell on the city.

Once the breach opened in the fortifications in the north-east of the city – which gave its name for a few years to a square in the town Piazza della Breccia, which has since become Piazza Marconi, near the church of San Domenico – it All that remains is to wait for the surrender. This was done on March 31, 1630. It was only in 1631, by the Cherasco Treaty, that the city was attached to the France of Louis XIII.

The French transform the small town into a fortress

Due to its strategic position at the foot of the Alps and its neighborhood with Turin, the new capital of the Duchy of Savoy, Pignerol is coveted. Its fortifications, dating from the Middle Ages, consist of a castle with a keep, several towers, and a main building. The town was surrounded by a bastioned wall from the beginning of the 16th century.

Pignerol was carefully fortified by Jean de Beins (5) and constituted until the end of the century an important defense of the kingdom of France. The first "private government", was erected by Louis XIII into a "general government" in 1642, the first recorded governor of which was Henri de Malecy (6) from 1643 to 1651. This is the reason why the French authorities – and Louis XIV the first - continued to strengthen the city's defenses. Piedmontese and French engineers carried out multiple projects there which led to the petrification of the urban enclosure and the complete isolation of the medieval castle, preserved in its entirety, in a square citadel with a double bastioned rampart. The enclosure, for its part, is made up of five bastioned fronts and five bastions. The city is thus protected, clockwise, by the bastions of the Capuchins, Schomberg, Montmorency, Créqui, Villeroy, Richelieu, La Cour, and that of Malicy (named after the first governor of the city, 1634 to 1650), while the citadel is by the bastions of the King, the Queen, Aiguebonne and the Foundry.

However, these bastions can only be accessed through two gates: the Turin Gate to the southeast, the main entrance located between the bastions of Créqui and Montmorency, and the France Gate to the southwest, between the bastions of Richelieu and of the Court.

The Citadel

The transformation of the small town located at the mouth of a valley on the Po plain into a military lock involves the construction of a citadel. This is to the detriment of the upper part of the city, while its lower part undergoes major interventions to strengthen its defenses. This is how an arsenal, a cannon foundry, a military hospital, and barracks were built. It is these important changes that give Pignerol the image of an imposing fortress city as it is represented in 17th-century engravings. The town and the outskirts definitively ceased to exist: all the palaces, noble or not, were demolished, except the San Maurizio church, and the initial appearance of the place was lost. Pignerol is surrounded by a double row of walls except in places where the nature of the terrain allows simple walls which, at regular intervals, extend towards the plain to form bastions. Between one bastion and another, there are the half-moons, located in the middle of the ditch which allow the homes to be protected from a more advanced position. And finally, a covered path surrounds the city.

The citadel dates from the 10th century and rises on the hill. It was under Thomas of Savoy that it was strengthened by the addition of six towers. In 1630, upon the arrival of French troops, Richelieu decided to surround it with a bastion and made it the first-rate citadel before it was reinforced at the request of Louvois by Vauban. In 1696, during the restitution of the city to Victor Amadeus II, the walls disappeared in the noise of the mines.

However, the citadel has been passed down to posterity for a reason quite other than its power. A state prison, it “welcomes” illustrious people, the first of them being Nicolas Fouquet, the king’s superintendent of finance. After his arrest, he was taken to Pignerol on January 16, 1665, escorted by a certain Charles de Batz, Lord D'Artagnan, as proven by the documents kept in the city's archives. For a few years, from 1669 to 1681, his “roommate” was someone named Eustache Danger, who will go down in posterity as the mysterious “Iron Mask”. The latter arrived on August 24, 1669, with his “guardian angel” M. de Saint-Mars (7) – governor of the citadel from 1665 to 1681 and related to Louvois – who was attached to him for the entire duration of his captivity. Only he knows the true identity of the Iron Mask, but he confides in no one. It would be unfair not to mention the Duke of Lauzun, imprisoned because his gallantries towards certain ladies were not fortunate enough to please the Sun King.

Vauban's modernizations

In 1670, the king's first engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, arrived in Pignerol. Other projects were certainly carried out before Vauban's first visit to the site in 1669. The latter came at the request of Louis XIV to enlarge the fortifications (probably extending them towards Saluzzo, to the southwest) and to improve them. He signed a project in 1670 for the citadel and the city, of which he criticized the tangle of ancient and modern defenses.

He retraced the covered path - which he provided with crosspieces and retractable weapon squares - and modernized the interior: the relocation of the toilets, previously too close to the drinking water reserves, made it possible in particular to improve the comfort and hygiene of the garrison.

Military and climatic situation

In 1692, La Motte established another project providing for the construction of completely new works and a deepening of the ditches to restructure the urban enclosure. However, the War of the League of Augsburg led French engineers to only undertake emergency work, which nevertheless made it possible to defeat the Piedmontese siege of 1693. A final project was carried out in 1695.

In reality, after bloody battles, at La Staffarda on August 18, 1690, and La Marseille on October 4, 1693, followed by long bombardments, the city returned to the Duke of Savoy Victor-Amédée II (8) by the Treaty of Turin of August 29, 1696, which includes as a clause for the duchy the obligation to dismantle the fortifications. A work that will last thirteen years.

However, Louis XIV had a magnificent inscription engraved above the door: “Pignerol will perpetually obey the French, who will have here a door always open to Italy. »

On April 2, 1808, a violent earthquake destroyed a large part of what remained of the buildings erected in the 17th century. For their reconstruction, Napoleon will pay 50,000 livres of the time. Only a few of these buildings survive today: the Arsenal, built in 1690 at the request of Vauban, and the cavalry hotel, behind the Villeroy bastion which was demolished in 1960. As for the mysterious figure of the Iron Mask, it is the subject every year, the first week of October, of a costumed representation during which it is possible to converse with D'Artagnan.

1• Charles I de Blanchefort de Créqui (Charles II de Créquy, around 1575-1638), 2nd Duke of Lesdiguières, was colonel of the French Guards then Marshal of France and Knight of the Holy Spirit. From 1625, he participated in military operations in Piedmont, seized Saluzzo then participated in the campaign which led to the capitulation of Pinerolo. He died in combat in Lombardy.

2• In 1627, the last Gonzaga of Mantua died without descendants. Allied to the Nevers, his throne therefore goes to a Frenchman. A situation that cannot be tolerated by the Habsburgs who are moving to prevent the Nevers, who already reign over Monferrato (central Piedmont), from disrupting or even preventing the transit of troops through the Valtellina towards the battlefields of the war. Thirty Years Old. This is how Marshal Lesdiguières was sent by Richelieu at the head of 30,000 men to seize Pignerol, which he considered a strategic lock. “He who holds Pinerolo holds Piedmont,” he is said to have declared.

3• Successor of Charles-Emmanuel I at the head of Piedmont, and brother-in-law of the King of France, Victor Amédée I (1587-1637) nevertheless had to sign the Treaty of Cherasco (April 6, 1631) which ceded Pignerol to France and then ally with the latter to fight against Austria.

4• Schomberg (1575-1632) was appointed grand master of the artillery in 1622 and participated as such in the siege of La Rochelle. Marshal of France in 1625, he held the position of Superintendent of Finance of the kingdom for four years (1619-1623).

5• French military engineer, Jean de Beins (1577-1651) went to Savoy in 1697 alongside the Duke of Lesdiguières. Great fortifier of Dauphiné in 1607, he was ennobled in 1610 and took an important part in the Piedmont wars of Louis XIII.

6• Henri Martin, Marquis de Malecy (1594-1666) was the first captain of the Guards regiment. The governor of Pignerol is considered by his contemporaries as “one of the best men of war of his time”. In 1622, he participated in the siege of La Rochelle, and 1630, he conquered Savoy. On November 5, 1643, he was appointed by the king governor and lieutenant-general of Pignerol; a position he retained until his resignation eight years later. He will die in this same city.

7• Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars (1626-1708) was the son of an officer in the Paneterie du Roi. Musketeer at twenty-four, brigadier at thirty-four, and quartermaster four years later, it was he who, in the company of D'Artagnan, arrested Nicolas Fouquet in December 1664 and took him to the citadel of Pignerol. Saint-Mars was then governor of the Bastille from 1698 to 1708.

8• Victor Amédée II (1666-1732), son of Charles-Emmanuel II, can be considered the Charlemagne of Savoy. Defeated at La Staffarda in 1690, he nonetheless invaded Dauphiné two years later. Defeated at the Battle of La Marseille (1693), he had to sign a separate peace with France and received Pignerol. During the War of the Spanish Succession, he fought on the side of Austria and defeated the French at Turin in 1706. In 1713, through the Treaty of Utrecht, he received the Milanese and Sicily.

The Arsenal

The arsenal is built next to the Montmorency bastion. It is a building with a quadrangular plan built, at the will of Louis XIV, by the engineer La Motte de La Mire, as a powder and weapons repair depot. This project was completed in 1682 during its second visit. None of these plans altered the layout of the enclosure and the citadel which remained identical between 1669 and 1692.