The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

by Tom Reiss

  For keeping me from getting lost in the old growth forests of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French documents, my deep thanks to Lorraine Margherita, a born archivist who turned out to have many other talents up her sleeve, along with unparalleled energy. Lorraine originally helped me by transcribing and translating some of the document backlog I was accumulating; then she revealed her genius at organizing and turned thousands of highresolution photographs into a vast online archive. But it was only toward the end of my years of traveling, accumulating, researching, and writing—after I thought I’d found all it was possible to find—that Lorraine asked if she could try doing a little research for me and, lo and behold, various treasures that had been eluding me for years—notably the missing photographs of the Dumas statue the Nazis destroyed, certain papers from Dumas’s arrival in France, and the priceless third volume of Dr. Desgenettes’s Egyptian memoir—materialized. And despite the difference in our time zones, Lorraine was always on the other end of a Skype line when something crucial came up.

  After research is said and done, there is the fact-checking. Helping me with eagle-eyed persistence and doggedness to review every line of the manuscript was, first, Alexandra Schwartz, who has since brought her razor-sharp intelligence to the New York Review of Books (which is very lucky to have her), and then Paul Sager, another keen intellect and class act. Both Alex and Paul combed over the manuscript and found microscopic—and not so microscopic—errors to correct. Paul also turned out to be an expert proofreader, crack researcher, and a great sounding board for how my assertions might sound to an academic historian.

  On the “New York” side of this endeavor, I have been blessed by my association with some of the best people working in publishing. My miraculous agent, Tina Bennett, is a legend for good reason. Tina has been ready to follow General Dumas up the ice cliff face and into the line of fire since the day I first mentioned him to her, and her unwavering faith is a key reason why this book is in your hands. (If Tina had been there when Napoleon and Dumas faced off, the outcome might have been less certain.) A musketeer shout is also due to Svetlana Katz, another loyal supporter of the general, who has shown kind support to me over many years.

  I owe a huge debt to my fearless editor, Rick Horgan, who also well knows what it means to wait and hope, but who never stopped believing that, someday, I would bring him the goods. Rick is the king of laconic understatement (except when he sits down to write you one of his incisive twenty-page letters), and all his communications, on paper and in person, make me pleased once again that I chose this crazy profession. It’s a rare and wonderful thing to have a “boss” who always means what he says and can always make you smile. Nathan Roberson helps Rick out a lot with wrangling his more troublesome authors; therefore I definitely owe him thanks as well.

  Crown is truly a team—a regiment—and while many of the faces around the table have changed since I signed on, this spirit and sense of shared enterprise seems, if anything, to have gotten stronger. Maya Mavjee and Molly Stern weren’t here when I started out, but they are two generals who inspire supreme confidence; I am deeply grateful for their support. The other officers in this army are equally stellar. I would cheerfully march alongside Jay Sones, Dyana Messina, Annsley Rosner, and Jill Flaxman any day of the week. I thank Tina Constable for her early support and enthusiasm, though I never got to work with her. Thanks to Linda Kaplan, Courtney Snyder, Karin Schulze, and Rachel Berkowitz for signing up great European publishers for The Black Count. Thanks to Sam Weber for his remarkable painting of General Dumas, and to Christopher Brand and Eric White for using it to design such a striking and elegant cover. And thanks to Cindy Berman, she of infinite patience, and Maria Elias, and all the people in production who made the moving parts here—multiple map revisions, anyone?—fit perfectly together.

  In the European theater of operations, I thank the remarkable people who are bringing The Black Count to the U.K. I was sad to lose Rebecca Carter as my editor when she switched hats to agenting, but it was my great good fortune that her replacement was Michal Shavit from Granta. Meanwhile, while I was still polishing drafts, Tom Drake Lee sent me letters that made me impatient to buy my own book—surely a good sign in a marketing director—and Liz Foley and Fiona Murphy were equally supportive. I also want to say a word about my new French publisher. Given the book’s subject, no translated edition could be more important than the French one. This is why I am so happy that General Dumas’s French legacy is in the hands of Alice d’Andigné at Flammarion.

  I met Alice through my friend Clémence Boulouque, whom I met in turn when I brought L’orientaliste to France: getting to know Clémence has been one of the great added bonuses of choosing to devote myself to a French topic these past years. She is unfailingly generous and witty (especially, so I’m told, in old Aramaic).

  As she did the last time, the wonderful Basia Grocholski allowed me to pull herself out of her real life to discuss the all-important topic of fonts and title spacing. Chuck Lin and Danielle Cacnio returned with their Zen mastery of the art of website construction.

  Particular thanks are due to Melanie Thernstrom—my old friend of epic proportions, and the author herself of a growing pile of fascinating books—who put down her life, and her two adorable twins, to pick up my final manuscript and vastly improve it with her brilliant queries and suggestions. The child of historians, Melanie has never been very interested in history, which made her an unexpectedly ideal reader: though she came to appreciate military tactics more than I ever could have imagined, she posed the most fundamental questions, accepted nothing but the clearest answers, and, crucially, forced me to pull out a saber and slash “the boring parts.” I tried. Melanie’s husband, Michael Callahan, was also infinitely helpful and welcoming. When I needed a quiet place to work, they invited me stay on for weeks in an unused wing of a 1920s mansion they were renting; I worked round-the-clock, undisturbed, but got bright and witty company whenever I wanted to be disturbed. I literally cannot thank them enough.

  This ideal writer’s retreat was capped off when Melanie’s father, Professor Stephan Thernstrom—who does like history—stopped by and generously read my manuscript; I thank Steve for his valuable suggestions, especially about the Thirteen Colonies and the early American republic.

  On the home front, my remarkable wife, Julie Just, somehow managed to read and edit my pages with her usual literary clairvoyance and tireless devotion, while at the same time raising our two daughters and pursuing her own demanding career as an editor and agent. Though an expert reader of what we now call “YA literature,” she had somehow missed The Three Musketeers; I’m glad I could give her a new favorite novel. I’m sure all the nocturnal living that anyone so closely associated with me must bear has taken its toll, but I believe we will one day discover that good coffee and late nights of intellectual stimulation are, in fact, the cure for most modern maladies. At any rate, Julie’s ear is still incomparable, her taste impeccable, and her editorial eye essential. I find talking with her about sentences to be one of life’s great pleasures, and her reaction to what I write is half the fun of writing it.

  As usual, my brother, Pete, who does double duty as my best friend, has been a rock of sanity and support during the years it took me to write this book. My amazing daughters, Lucy and Diana, drove me insane in the best possible way. I thank my well-read mother-in-law, Jean Bower, and the rest of my family for shows of support and kindness for the “writer in the family.” I thank my father, James, for bringing me up surrounded by books and for teaching me a respect for knowledge above material things. Finally, I thank my mother, Luce, a child of France in the late 1930s, who was raised there at a time when the Germans were destroying a lot more than statues. In an orphan’s home after the war, at age nine, my mom was given a book inside a care package: the 1938 Hachette edition of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. She tore through it late into the night, under the covers, until it was confiscated—and she had to wait six months to find out what
happened to Edmond Dantès after he escaped from the Chateau d’If. She eventually brought it with her when she came to the United States, and this old green edition of Le Comte still sits on a shelf in my parents’ library, along with the other Dumas novels that my mom’s adoptive father, my beloved Great Uncle Lolek, gave her in her new home beneath the George Washington Bridge. These modest editions surely have something to do with why I just devoted the better part of the last decade to chasing down this story.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON NAMES

  I have written a biography of a French historical figure, based mostly on French sources, but I’ve written it for a general English-speaking audience. In this sort of situation it is always tricky to decide on rules of spelling and punctuation. I decided to avoid an obsessive scholarly style in favor of an accessible approach that is most common in popular biographies (and least distracting to an American reader) while offering the kind of extensive sourcing that some readers and critics will be looking for in the back matter.

  Among the choices affected by this approach include the following points:

  I opt to refer to Napoleon as “Napoleon” throughout the narrative, even though the practice among historians (and French speakers) is to refer to him as “General Bonaparte” or “Bonaparte” until about 1799, when he seized political power in France, and then to switch to “Napoleon” around 1802 or even in 1804, when he officially takes the title Emperor Napoleon I. I hope purists will forgive me. (Of course, when I quote from letters by Dumas or other contemporaries, they usually refer to him as “General Bonaparte.”)

  I don’t want to translate names, so Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie keeps his hyphen and his “de”—the common article that is a part of French noble names. But I do give the English equivalents of an aristocrat’s title, which is more familiar to most people. Hence, readers will meet “the Count de Maulde,” not “le comte de Maulde”—but also not “the Count of Maulde.” All these are possible, but I have chosen the form that I think best preserves the essence of the French name without littering the text with italics and foreign words.

  The French also love to hyphenate place-names, and generally I include the hyphen as a matter of respecting the accuracy of names. So the action of this story will take place in Saint-Domingue and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  By the same token, when a name—or title—is familiarly translated in English, I will follow that form, even when it creates a slight inconsistency. Hence, you read about “the Count of Monte Cristo” in this book, not “the Count de Monte-Cristo.”

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  ADA Archives départementales de l’Aisne (Laon, France)

  ADM Archives départementales du Morbihan (Vannes, France)

  ADPC Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais (Dainville and Arras, France)

  ADSM Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime (Rouen, France)

  AN Archives nationales (Paris, France)

  ANOM Archives nationales d’outre-mer (Aix-en-Provence, France)

  BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris, France)

  CGH Collection Gilles Henry (documents privately collected by Gilles Henry)

  COARC Conservation des oeuvres d’art religieuses et civiles (Paris, France)

  MAD Musée Alexandre Dumas (Villers-Cotterêts, France)

  MAD Safe Safe in the Musée Alexandre Dumas*

  MM Alexandre Dumas (père), Mes mémoires, Vol. 1

  SHD Service historique de la Défense (Vincennes, France)

  PROLOGUE, PART 1: FEBRUARY 26, 1806

  1 Alexandre at his uncle’s house: MM, p. 224.

  2 “My cousin called to me”: Ibid., pp. 228–29. This and all other translations are my own, except in cases where I cite English-language publications.

  3 General Dumas dies: Death certificate of Alexandre Dumas (“Acte de Décès de Monsieur Thomas Alexandre Davy Dumas Delapailleterie [sic][,] Général de Division”), February 27, 1806, MAD.

  4 “I was four years old”: Alexandre Dumas (père), Le comte de Monte-Cristo, Vol. 5, p. 42.

  PROLOGUE, PART 2: JANUARY 25, 2007

  1 “I am afraid the situation is most delicate” (and the entire dialogue that follows this): Deputy Mayor Fabrice Dufour, author interview, January 25, 2007, Villers-Cotterêts.

  2 “Adam and Eve nights” and “after the champagne”: Ernest Roch, “L’ancien château royal,” p. 249, quoting Madame de Tencin and the Duke de Richelieu. (Active as a local historian of Villers-Cotterêts and the region in the years before World War I, Roch was instrumental in helping create the Alexandre Dumas Museum. He had a personal reason: his mother, Louise Boivin, had had an affair with Alexandre Dumas, and it was always believed in town that Ernest himself was the novelist’s illegitimate son—hence the grandson of General Dumas.)

  3 “In addition to being a first-class soldier”: David Johnson, The French Cavalry, 1792–1815, p. 43.

  4 three duels in one day: MM, p. 28; Ernest d’Hauterive, Un soldat de la Révolution, p. 78; Placide David, “Le général Th. Alexandre Dumas,” p. 40.

  5 captured twelve enemy soldiers: Report by the National Convention on a letter from Dumas, December 4, 1792, cited in Le Moniteur, reprinted in Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur, Vol. 14 (1858), p. 651.

  6 “Such brilliant conduct”: Jean-Baptiste Courcelles, “Dumas (Alexandre Davy),” p. 502.

  7 “My dear Dumas, you make”: The officer is General Barthélemy Joubert, in the Tyrol. Report by Dermoncourt, cited in MM, p. 118.

  8 commanding thousands of troops: For example, Dumas led a division with three thousand men in the Bardonnèche and Cezanne valleys in the campaign to capture Mont Cenis. Dumas to the Committee of Public Safety, May 14, 1794, SHD 3B9.

  9 general-in-chief: National Convention to Dumas, December 22, 1793, SHD 7YD91, and National Convention to Dumas, November 22, 1793, MAD.

  10 four-star general today: According to an 1898 military dictionary that seems applicable even today, a général de division wears three stars, a général de corps d’armée four stars, and a général d’armée five. Dumas held the equivalent of all these ranks. Dictionnaire militaire, encyclopédie des sciences militaires cited in “Les grades,” French Ministry of Defense, website: http://​www.​defense.​gouv.​fr/​terre/​bloc-​les-​essentiels/​les-​grades.

  11 spiked boots: Dumas to Citizen Guériot, March 13, 1794, SHD 3B107; Dumas to the Committee of Public Safety, March 21, 1794, SHD 3B9.

  12 He captured the enemy’s matériel: Dumas to Committee of Public Safety, May 14, 1794, SHD 3B9.

  13 Horatius Cocles: Antoine-Vincent Arnault et al., “Dumas (Alexandre Davy-de-la-Pailleterie),” p. 161; Simon Linstant, Essai sur les moyens d’extirper les préjugés des blancs contre la couleur des Africains et des sang-mêlés, p. 78; Edmond Chevrier, Le Général Joubert d’après sa correspondance, p. 98; Henri Bourgeois, Biographies de la Vendée militaire, pp. 9–10.

  14 Dumas went as Napoleon’s cavalry commander: Note from the office of commanding officers, January 8, 1800, SHD 7YD91; note from the Ministry of War, November 6, 1848, SHD 7YD91; director of the Avre Union Commission (Amiens) to the minister of war, October 23, 1880, SHD 7YD91.

  15 “Among the Muslims”: René-Nicolas Desgenettes, Souvenirs de la fin du XVIIIe siècle et du commencement du XIXe, Vol. 3, p. 124. To my knowledge, only two copies of this unpublished volume exist, one in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France (Paris), the other in the Bibliothèque centrale du Service des Armées (Val de Grâce).

  16 at over six feet: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2, 1786, CGH: “5 pieds 8 pouces.” (The modern conversion is 1.85 meters or 6 feet and 1 inch.)

  17 to pay his passage back to France: Robert Landru, À propos d’Alexandre Dumas, pp. 65–66.

  18 falling-out with his father: MM, pp. 21–22.

  19 he enlisted as a horseman: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2,
1786, CGH.

  20 first civil rights movement: Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime, pp. 5–6.

  21 “so far inferior”: Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).

  22 the Black Legion: Report on the creation of the Free Cavalry Legion of the Americans and the South, September 15, 1792, SHD XK9.

  23 Dumas promoted to general: Director of the Avre Union Commission (Amiens) to the minister of war, October 23, 1880, SHD 7YD91.

  24 “horror of negroes” and next two quotations: Paul Thiébault, Mémoires du général baron Thiébault, Vol. 1, p. 60 and Vol. 2, p. 31.

  25 offered Jews full civil and political rights: National Assembly decree of September 27, 1791, in Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860, Vol. 31 (1888), pp. 372–73.

  26 “was a living emblem”: Chevrier, p. 98.

  27 Dumas opposes the bloodshed: General Dumas, “Rapport sur l’état de la guerre de la Vendée,” October 8, 1794, cited in MM, pp. 41–45.

  28 “generous republican”: Bourgeois, p. 16.

  29 “I worshipped my father”: MM, p. 225.

  30 Marie-Louise Labouret: (Hereafter “Marie-Louise.”) Birth certificate, July 4, 1769, MAD Safe.

  31 Marie-Louise’s father, Claude Labouret: Marie-Louise’s marriage certificate, November 28, 1792, MAD Safe.

  32 General Alexandre Dumas’s children: Alexandrine Aimée Dumas, b. 1793; Louise Alexandrine Dumas, b. 1796, d. 1797; Alexandre Dumas, b. 1802, d. 1870.