Chapter Ireby to Iron Mask of I by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Iron Gates or Demir Kara, a celebrated pass of the Teuthras, through which all caravans between Smyrna and Brusa must needs pass.

Iron Hand, Goetz von Berlichingen (q.v.), who replaced his right hand, which he lost at the siege of Landshut, by an iron one (sixteenth century).

Goethe has made this the subject of an historical drama. (See Silver Hand.)

Iron Mask (The Man in the). This mysterious man went by the name of Lestang, but who he was is as much in nubibus as the author of the Letters of Junius. The most general opinion is that he was count Ercolo Antonio Matthioli, a senator of Mantua and private agent of Ferdinand Charles duke of Mantua; and that his long imprisonment of twenty-four years was for having deceived Louis XIV. in a secret treaty for the purchase of the fortress of Casale. M. Loiseleur utterly denies this solution of the mystery (see Temple Bar, 182–4, May, 1872); but Marius Topin, in his Man in the Iron Mask, maintains that “the man was undoubtedly Matthioli.” N. B.—The tragedies of Zschokke in German (1795), and Fournier in French, are based on the supposition that the man in the mask was marechal Richelieu, a twin-brother of the Grand Monarque, and this is the solution given by the abbé Soulavie.