Until now, it remains a secret who was hiding behind the famous iron mask. Either the twin brother of King Louis XIV, who could bring misfortune to the royal house, or the minister of one of the Italian princes Ercol Antonio Mattioli, who deceived the French monarch. Or maybe General Vivienne de Boulond, who lost the Nine Years War ineptly?
The son of the Oryol landowner repeated the fate of the French prisoner
In fact, the faces of the French prisoners were hidden by velvet, not iron masks, for the sake of preserving their incognito. But the face of one of the Russian criminals was hidden by a real metal muzzle. And this was quite reasonable.
Better not to see
Historians suggest who this person was - more precisely, an inhuman. This story began in the middle of 1893, when mutilated corpses began to be found in Moscow. Moreover, it seemed that a fierce beast was dealing with people: the faces of the unfortunate were disfigured beyond recognition, their entrails were eaten away. And the victims were representatives of different classes - from the landowner to the coachman, the mayor and the peasant who came to the fair. For almost three years, the police unsuccessfully searched for the elusive maniac who continued to hunt people. But chance helped. Near the corpse of a torn woman, passers-by found a drunken man with bloody lips lying. He was tied up and taken to the police station, where he was identified.
It was Dmitry Mukhortin. The son of a poor Oryol landowner who came to Moscow to study at the university. But due to poor performance, he was expelled and earned a living as a salesman in a wine shop.
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The materials of the trial itself have not survived. But the report of the reporter of the court chronicle of the newspaper "Moskovsky leaf" remained. According to him, there were so many people in the hall that “there was nowhere for an apple to fall”. Mukhortin looked into the hall with detachment, answered the judge's questions in monosyllables - “I don’t know,” “I didn’t kill,” “I don’t remember,” “not guilty.” Nevertheless, he was found guilty on all 14 counts and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor, since the death penalty in Russia was abolished. Hearing the sentence, Mukhortin seemed to be transformed. His face was twisted with rage, he rushed at the guard and grabbed his throat with his teeth. In a few seconds it was all over: the maniac gnawed at his throat. Mukhortin was tied up and sent to a cell to await his departure. He was to serve his sentence in one of the Siberian prison.
Mysterious inmate
And now, many years later, historians came across curious material concerning the Biysk convict prison. One of the inmates was never removed from the metal mask with slits for the eyes, mouth, ears and nose, which was locked at the back. Even when the prisoner was eating, working in the felling or washing in the bathhouse under the strict supervision of the escorts. On one of these "washing days" a terrible incident occurred. The mutilated corpse of one of the convicts was found in the dressing room. His face was torn to shreds, lacerated wounds gaped on his body, and the floor was covered in blood. The head of the prison rushed to the cell, which contained the man in the iron mask. But, firstly, he was in solitary confinement under round-the-clock supervision, reading a book, and secondly, the prisoner had not yet waited for his turn to take water procedures. The murder remained unsolved. Further more - after some time, late at night, in one of the common cells, a panic began, resembling general insanity. The prisoners in all seriousness claimed that the devil burst into the cell, who attacked their comrade and not only killed him, but also disfigured the body.
The head of the prison did not believe in mysticism, but nevertheless ordered to put a man in an iron mask on a chain. But very soon rumors began to reach the prison from the surrounding villages, one more terrible than the other. Local residents claimed that a werewolf appeared in the forests, which attacks the peasants and brutally kills them, tearing out their entrails. And then the head of the prison, not wanting to wag his nerves anymore, ordered to take the man in the iron mask to work, and there specially selected strong prisoners threw him into the flame of a huge fire, near which they warmed themselves. So, it is reliably known that it was the maniac Mukhortin. But was it the same person? And if not, then it is quite possible that the prisoners, and the local residents working in the prison, simply repaired, hiding behind Mukhortin's "serve as a list", which was not a special secret.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 17, Sergey Uranov