Camille Bartoli was born on August 15th 1936 in Nice where his father was an officer in charge of Colonel Chabral to install artillery in the forts of the Maginot Line of the Alpes Maritimes. After studying at the Faculty of Science in Marseille, Bartoli became an honorary professor of mathematics; writer, lecturer.
Camille Bartoli is very eclectic in the subjects he deals with ranging from the defense of the Côte d'Azur to the Man in the Iron Mask, through Nostradamus, modern mathematics and logic, Napoleon (who landed on the beach of Golfe-Juan, March 1, 1815) or animal defence and the Resistance during the Second World War.
Historian, especially of events he has lived, he strives to remember them so that current and future generations learn an essential lesson because this must be the purpose of History. He lives in Golfe-Juan, facing the beach, in a family property inherited from his ancestor Honoré Daumas, from Cannes and... corsair of the Emperor.
Bartoli touches the Affair of Rennes in the following way -One reads in the 'Introduction to La Vrai Langue Celtique', written by Jean-Pierre DELOUX [En la Sainte Fete de Myriam] a term he uses for Pierre Plantard - the Noble Traveller. Perhaps, as it strongly seems - the Noble Traveller of Camille Bartoli was also Pierre Plantard! Bartoli wrote;
He who walks for a long time acknowledging the route stones should be listened to! He was my guide, the Noble Traveller, and he advised me in the research into "L’Inconcevable secret du Masque de Fer” (The Incredible Secret of the Iron Mask'). This elderly and distinguished gentleman met me at the Hotel Negresco in Nice - i knew him then simply as Monsieur G, and he offered to tell me ‘the secret’ of the Iron Mask on one condition - that i publish it".
You can see in the article The Sacred Clock there are circumstantial suggestions that Monsieur G & Pierre Plantard are the same person. This is because the content of the assertions are essentially the same, from the idea of a Secret order behind the Templars wanting to re-instate a Merovingian Monarchy [HERE] more about Bartolo's book HERE & an article in an old issue of the Rhedesium about this Monsieur G [Rennes-le-Chateau Reveue from HERE].
It is interesting to read that Bartolli may have discovered to his satisfaction who the Man in the Iron Mask was. [https://www.babelio.com/livres/Bartoli-Henri-de-lhomme-au-masque-de-fer-Sa-vie-et-son/387596]. He said it was Henri II, Duc de Guise via his book;
Henri de - l’homme au masque de fer Sa vie et son
However this would be different to the assertion put to Bartoli by Monsieur G for research during his earlier book [as mentioned above] - where the mysterious Monsieur G had stated the Man in the Iron Mask was Henri de Lorraine. Bartoli wrote -
"Monsieur G told [me] that the conspiracy involving the Iron Mask was created by ‘secret’ members of the ‘Order of the Temple’. This, he said, was a ‘clandestine’ organisation which survived the Knights Templar after their demise in 1307. Monsieur G claimed to be a member of this ‘secret order’. He explained:
‘ ....The secret that the Templars of the 17th century were seeking, as were the Templar knights before them, was to impose their ‘grand design’ upon the world, a political and religious system to unify all nations and sects .......’.
Monsieur G then went on to detail the first part of this ‘grand design’ of the secret Templars. It involved the re-instatement of the legitimate French monarchy identified as those Frankish kings –the Merovingian's – who Monsieur G added ‘were kings by right of birth’. All dynasties which followed after – the Capetian's, the Valois and the Bourbon were said to be illegitimate. It was re-iterated: ‘The crown of France belonged by divine right to he descendants of Charles de Lorraine, who was the true heir when Capet usurped the throne at the end of the 10th century’.
Monsieur G asserted that when Louis XIVth was king he realised that there was a conspiracy against him and that a concerted effort was being made to oust him in favour of the Grand Monarch. He learnt the identity of this ‘Grand Monarch’ through the secret order who were trying to replace him. It was Henri de Lorraine, descendant of Charlemagne and heir to the Merovingian kings. Basically, Louis then had Henri imprisoned and it was Henri who became the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’.
This was reported in Bartoli's 1978 book, J'ai découvert l'inconcevable secret du Masque de Fer.
The most popular theory today for the identity of the Iron Mask is a character called Eustache Dauger. Historian Sonnino wrote in a new book - after consulting meticulously the existing archives that "historians are pretty much in agreement that his [the Man in the Iron Masks'] name was Eustache Dauger, that he only occasionally wore the mask and that when he did wear a mask, it was velvet, not iron. They are also quite sure that he was a valet. What they have not been able to figure out is whose valet he was, and for what possible reason he was held under tight security for over 30 years."
Another reviewer of Sonnino’s work "The Search for the Man in the Iron Mask: A Historical Detective Story" wrote;
"...careful research allowed him [Sonnino] definitively to build his hypothesis that the condemned man, whose chief offence seemed to have been that he knew too much about the financial affairs of the avaricious chief minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, was indeed Dauger. Thus, it is to the career of the cardinal-minister that Sonnino turns to understand the offence of Dauger. During his tenure in office (1642 to 1661), the corrupt Mazarin ruthlessly amassed great personal wealth, numerous sinecures and seignuries, and even the crown jewels of England, which Queen Henriette Marie carried with her when she sought refuge in France during the Civil War. But Mazarin did not build these vast holdings singlehandedly. Assisting him was a considerable number of men bound to him by patronage. First in this group was Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Mazarin’s chief financial adviser, who relentlessly pursued his eventually successful effort to destroy politically his rival Nicolas Fouquet. Colbert, too, had his minions, enlisting the help of a now largely forgotten group of men, chief among whom was Antoine-Hercule Picon. Sonnino finds that Picon knew Mazarin’s affairs almost as well as Colbert himself and that he frequently provided cover for some of the cardinal’s more unseemly financial dealings. For his part, Picon, like most important Old Regime officials, employed the assistance of a number of valets, and it was to the most trusted of those men, Eustace Dauger, that Picon entrusted some of the most sensitive details of Mazarin’s peculations. Indeed, Sonnino suggests that Picon had employed Dauger in work of increasing importance since about 1643 and that the valet was well known to both Mazarin and Colbert. Dauget was, in short, a key link in the circle of men ultimately dependent on Mazarin’s good will and patronage". [H-France Review Vol. 16 (November 2016), No. 258, Review by Julius R. Ruff, Marquette University].
Dauger was not always isolated from the other prisoners when he was locked up. Wealthy and important prisoners usually had manservants; Nicolas Fouquet [another candidate for the Man in the Iron Mask] actually had Dauger as his manservant. It was in 1675, that Louvois gave permission for this arrangement on condition that he was to serve Fouquet only .... and that he was not to meet anyone else.
Whatever the answer may be - if Bartoli did 'bump' in to the real Plantard living in the Nice area, or perhaps travelling to meet each other in Nice, it would seem Plantard was working to his usual MO of co-opting an existing myth on to his Priory mythology 'to get out a certain message' which he had certainly done before [i.e the Gisors myth transposed on to the myths at Rennes-les-Bains see HERE].
camille Bartoli160 pages
Summary:The identity of the Iron Mask, since its imprisonment by Louis XIV in 1664, has fascinated generations of historians and writers, starting with Voltaire. The remarkable work of Camille Bartoli confirms the thesis of a monumental state secret, linked to the legitimacy of the King of France. It tells for the first time the extraordinary life of the romantic prisoner of Sainte-Marguerite Island - a Don Juan, who competed with the Sun King by his excess and splendor.
Bartoli names the Man in the Iron Mask as Henri II, duc de Guise and in this book the mysterious Monsieur G [who Bartoli had met during his investigations in to a prior book - 'The Man in the Iron Mask'] has become Monsieur Germain. No doubt an allusion to Count St Germain. Bartoli clarifies that this Monsieur Germain is the same Monsieur G".
Anyhow the use of pseudonyms fit the bill of how Plantard usually worked. This Monsieur G/Germain talked of the same things as Plantard had elsewhere [for example, the secret order behind the Knights Templar, re-instatement of Merovingian Monarchy etc]. The strange thing is that the link with Plantard/Bartoli and their interest in Nostradamus is totally reflected in the book 'The Dreamer of the Vine' by Liz Greene, first published in 1980. The following are 2 reviews regarding her book:
"Nostradamus, the world-famous prophet and seer, tells the compelling story of his life - a magical web of horoscopes, dreams, omens and prophecies set against the deadly political intrigue of the glittering French court of the sixteenth century...Nostradamus is the Dreamer. The Vine is the twisting family tree of the kings whose roots reach back into ancient times long before Christ, revealing the mysterious powers of the engimatic goddess, Notre Dame... and a fearsome, unforgettable secret...'Compelling... full of rich imagery... succeeds in conveying a powerful, dreamlike impression of that splendid yet terrible period with its strange blend of mysticism and political expediency.'
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'intriguing'
THE LITERARY REVIEW"
If the source for Bartoli is not Plantard then we have another character acting in the same way & advocating the same information prior to the publication of Holy Blood, Holy Grail!
More to follow!