And so our army waited for the spring. January passed, and February, and a letter came from the Ministry of War – I had been reported as a traitor to the revolution. I complained, and luckily the mayor of Grenoble stood up for me; he told them I was still a patriot and loyal to France.
I wrote back to the Ministry of War and told them in a letter that my soldiers were my brothers. I would fight for freedom but I would not throw lives away.
In April, when the worst of the snowfall was over, I took a division to take the Petit St Bernard pass, and General Sarret went to Mont Cenis.
It was still bitterly cold up in the mountains. Our uniforms were not made for such ice and snow. The frost bit hard, some men lost fingers and toes. The climb was treacherous, and our horses’ hooves slipped on icy mountain paths. I was almost at Petit St Bernard, where we had captured a fort on the road, when Jacques Piston rode one-handed into camp, his horse exhausted, his shoulder bandaged up.
“Sarret is dead. Him and three quarters of the men.” He shook his head, his beard was still full of snow. “It was a massacre. The Italians had reinforcements. They simply cut us down.”
I poured my old friend a drink. It felt as if my heart was breaking.
“I have never seen anything like it, Alex.” Jacques looked at me. “The blood on the snow, I thought they were red flowers at first. Like poppies.” He laughed bitterly. “Until I got closer.” He took a drink. “They had spies. They knew we were coming. We walked right into a trap,” he said. “They cut us all down...”
I shook my head.
“We have to take the St Bernard Pass, for all those men.” I said. “For France and for a future free of kings. We owe them that.”
“The men are tired, Alex,” Jacques said. “You need to find a way to remind them what this is all for.”
The climb up to the St Bernard Pass was long and hard and very cold. The path for the horses was narrow, and many times we had to dismount and inch along narrow ledges with ice cliffs on one side and sheer drops on the other.
I could not fault my men. In the face of hard cannon fire we reached the top of the pass with no losses and barely thirty men injured. In fact the enemy seemed struck down with surprise that we were there at all. The Sardinian soldiers melted away into the spring snow and we took their positions easily, raising our flag for liberty on the roof of the world.
Once we had secured the pass I set off with my men for Mont Cenis. We would not let them win. This time we kept our plans top secret. I knew the Sardinians would not expect another attack, and this time we would make some key diversions along the mountain ridge close by. I would take the fight to our enemy as if I was in a duel; make them look the other way while I disarmed them.
I made sure we had every bit of weaponry, grenades, even clubs and pikes. Every man had a bayonet – a sword blade fixed to the end of his army musket. In early May we began another climb.
The pass was defended on three sides, the enemy had – we knew – doubled their forces and had set up fortified redoubts that would cut down anyone approaching across the glacier. They had set up cannon and guns all waiting for us.
If you have never seen an Italian cannonball you might not understand the damage they can do, so let me explain. After they career headlong across the battlefield obliterating any soldier they contact, they can also bounce, indeed the gunners are trained to set them to bounce; and a ton of iron bouncing at one’s head or chest means instant death. This is what we were to face, not simply the cold and the thin air of the mountaintops, but the chance to be mown down.
I would not let it happen again.
I had planned several small diversions and false attacks to distract the enemy and draw their fire – one to the left of the pass, the other along a ridge to the right. I sent Jacques Piston with a small force of men to set off explosions all along the ridge. For a moment, as I lay in hiding with the main attack force on the glacier, I worried nothing would happen. We waited. All was still and quiet; nothing moved, no wind, no birds.
Then the afternoon exploded again and again as the bombs went off. I waited until the Sardinians began to fire their cannon in the wrong direction. Then I stood up and led the charge across the sea of ice.
My men did not let me down. We ran, we slipped, we snowshoed across the glacier, climbing ridges and stumbling through the snow. We had a good ten minutes before their guns rained down straight at us to get to the smaller fortress.
I saw one of my men brush off a broken leg. “It’s nothing!” he said as he hauled himself up into a captured fort. Another, whose hand had been blown off, kept going, firing with his good hand. Every single one of us fought like furies.
We scaled the walls, set grenades against the walls and stormed inside. The Sardinians, surprised by our speed, surrendered. Then we turned their guns on the bigger fortress and fired their own cannon across the glacier at the enemy.
I knew my men would not give up. We were fighting for Sarret and our fallen brothers, for liberty and for equality. We would not stop until victory was ours.
The Sardinians retreated away down the mountainside and back to their king. We would have chased them all the way to Turin.
We took nine hundred prisoners that day and captured forty cannon, and by a miracle we suffered only seven dead and thirty injured. Every man was a hero.
Jacques Piston found me later that evening in the fort at Mont Cenis. I was looking west across the mountains. The sun was setting, and the snow was the same colour as the inside of the shells I used to find on the beach in Jeremie long ago.
“We did it, Alex. Nine hundred prisoners, and the rest running back to their king in the south.” He took two metal cups and set them out on the table, filled them with the local brandy we’d found in the fort’s cellar.
“Seven of our brothers dead,” I said and wished we had not lost any. I looked out across the mountains again. Breathed in the sharp clear air that tasted of freedom.
I thought of my brothers and sister. Of my young family, of the new France. I was fighting for all of them, for the moment when there would be no slaves and when all men and women could stand equal. I felt a prickle in my chest. Jacques clapped me on the back. He raised his cup.
“To the seven,” he said. “And to liberty!”
“To liberty!” I said and gulped the brandy down. “To all of us across the earth.”
Afterword
This was not the end of Alex Dumas’s incredible life, but it was the beginning of the end. There was a young Corsican officer, who took the opportunities the revolution gave him and rose up through the ranks almost as quickly as Dumas. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was jealous of Dumas’s success, and as he rose he looked for ways to have Dumas demoted.
Dumas became a military governor in northern Italy, where he is remembered for his sense of fairness and honour. He was recalled to the army when Napoleon staged an ill-judged invasion of Egypt, to free the Egyptians from their Mamluk rulers. The Egyptians assumed Dumas, as commander-in-chief of the cavalry, was the French leader, which annoyed Napoleon even more.
The invasion ended in disaster for France – but not before Dumas, in yet another feat of bravery, saved local Egyptians from a coup. Napoleon had a painting of the glorious victory commissioned, but he made sure that the saviour galloping to the rescue was not Dumas.
As Dumas returned to France, the ship he was on put into Sicily, where he was captured by the king and detained in a dungeon, without any charges or chance of freedom. Dumas’s incarceration lasted nearly four years. He was poisoned and his health suffered in the damp stone castle. He was able to write home, though, and his wife and supporters petitioned the king and the French government to release him.
Eventually, in 1801, Dumas made it back to his wife and daughters in Villers-Cotterêts. He wrote continually to Napoleon to be paid for the time he spent in prison, and looking for a new commission. But Napoleon ignored his letters.
Dumas had one las
t child, a son, in 1802, but died in 1806 when his son was only four. This son, also named Alexandre, grew up to be one of the most famous and popular French writers in history. He wrote thrilling adventure stories, inspired by tales he had heard about his father – a man who could fight three duels in a day, who believed in honour and equality, and who was imprisoned for no reason.
His books are still in print today. You might not have read them, but you’ll have heard of them: The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, among others.
One of the few letters that remains from Alex Dumas, is this one, to his men before the battle for Mont Cernis. It gives a measure of the remarkable man who led a life so incredible it formed the basis for some of the most well-loved stories ever written:
“Your comrade, a soldier and general-in-chief ... was born in a climate and among men for whom liberty also had charms, and who fought for it first. Sincere lover of liberty and equality, convinced that all free men are equals, he will be proud to march out before you, to aid you in your efforts, and the coalition of tyrants will learn that they are loathed equally by men of all colours.”
READING ZONE!
TOP READING TIP
When reading an historical novel
it is often a good idea to make
yourself a timeline to work out
when it is set and how the events
fit in to history.
The events in this book take place
in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti)
and France but you could find
out what was happening in
other countries too.
READING ZONE!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
If you had to describe him
Alex to someone what words
would you use?
Do you think giving up his
money and position and working
up through the ranks was the
right thing to do?
What do you think his father
would really have thought of
him by the end of his career?
What about his mother?
READING ZONE!
QUIZ TIME
Can you remember the answers to these questions?
•What were the names of Alex’s younger brothers and sister?
•How much money did Alex’s father make
by selling his son to Captain Langlois?
•What were the colours of the revolution?
•What job did the Chevalier St George
offer Alex in his new regiment?
•Who was Alex’s second-in-command
in the French Alps?
•What was the name of the
woman who married Alex?
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First published in 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Text copyright © Catherine Johnson, 2020
IIllustrations copyright © Rachel Sanson, 2020
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To Liberty! the Adventures of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Page 5