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

by Tom Reiss

  56 Nanon: Banat, pp. 40, 45, 72.

  57 La Boëssière’s appearance at the registration tribunal: Banat, pp. 72–73.

  58 “multiplies every day”: Peabody, pp. 85–86.

  59 allowed to retain its colonial outposts in India: Jaswant Lal Mehta, Advanced Study in the History of Modern India, 1707–1813, p. 358.

  60 “In the end, the race”: Peabody, p. 117.

  61 Police des Noirs: “Déclaration du Roi, pour la police des Noirs, donnée à Versailles le 9 août 1777,” ANOM, F1B 1 à F1B 4; François-André Isambert, Decrusy, and Alphonse-Honoré Taillandier, Table du recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la révolution de 1789, vol. 29 (1833), p. 251.

  62 certificate for “colored” subjects: Peabody, p. 129.

  63 race laws poorly administered: Ibid., p. 124.

  CHAPTER 5: AMERICANS IN PARIS

  1 “One of the handsomest men”: Author unknown, “Le général Dumas, homme de couleur,” n.d. [1797], BNF NAF 24641.

  2 “dark—very dark”: Arthur Davidson, Alexandre Dumas (père): His Life and Works, p. 4.

  3 “well built”: MM, p. 15.

  4 average height: Paolo Malanima, Pre-modern European Economy: One Thousand Years, p. 310.

  5 Dumas’s height: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2, 1786, CGH.

  6 Dumas’s hands and feet: MM, p. 15.

  7 Dumas’s youth in Paris: Ernest d’Hauterive, Un soldat de la Révolution, p. 13; Placide David, “Le général Th. Alexandre Dumas,” p. 39; Victor-Emmanuel Roberto Wilson, Le Général Alexandre Dumas: Soldat de la liberté, p. 57.

  8 “In the midst of the elegant youth”: MM, p. 15.

  9 Louis XVI’s passion for hunting, clocks, and locks: Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, p. 54; François Barrière and Mme Maigné, The Private Life of Marie Antoinette: Autobiographical Memoirs of Madame Campan, p. 164.

  10 After a hunt: Michael Forsyth, Buildings for Music, p. 112.

  11 Antoine spending money in Paris: M. Delisson to the Count de Maulde, June 25, 1786, ADPC 10J35.

  12 men of color as “Americans”: John D. Garrigus, “ ‘Sons of the Same Father’: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue, 1760–1792,” p. 152.

  13 alliance with the American colonies: Treaty of Amity and Commerce, February 6, 1778, in The Controversy over Neutral Rights Between the United States and France, 1797–1800, ed. James Brown Scott and John Chandler Davis, p. 441.

  14 “electrical ambassador”: Schama, p. 44.

  15 humiliation in French India: N. R. Madhava, Criminal Justice India Series: Pondicherry, p. 7.

  16 free blacks at Siege of Savannah: Michael Lee Lanning, African Americans in the Revolutionary War, p. 85.

  17 two wires hanging to the ground: American Footprints in Paris, ed. Frances Wilson Huard, p. 104.

  18 “à la John Paul Jones” and sailing-ship hats: Guillaume Imbert de Boudeaux, Correspondance secrète, politique & littéraire, Vol. 8, p. 288; Gabriel d’Èze and A. Marcel, Histoire de la coiffure des femmes en France, pp. 166–68.

  19 “France retained glory and ruin”: Jules Michelet, Histoire de France au dix-huitième siècle: Louis XV et Louis XVI, p. 247.

  20 full-length portrait of Louis XVI: Catalogue, “The Final Sale of the Relics of General Washington,” p. 36, item 266.

  21 “the protector of the rights of mankind”: Benson John Lossing, Harpers’ Popular Cyclopaedia of United States History from the Aboriginal Period to 1876, Vol. 2, pp. 1490–91.

  22 Le Club de Boston ou des Américains: Fortnightly Review, Vol. 117 (London, 1922), p. 219.

  23 “French affairs are harder”: Lafayette to Washington, quoted by André Maurois, A History of France, p. 270.

  24 French optimism about American slavery: Edward Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion in France During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century, p. 117.

  25 plays about idyllic life in Virginia: Adam Zamoyski, Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries, 1776–1871, p. 19.

  26 three-hour coach ride: François Boulet, Leçon d’histoire de France: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, p. 109.

  27 candlelit lamps: Nicholas Papayanis, Planning Paris Before Haussmann, p. 44; Louis de Sivry and M. de Rolot, Précis historique de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, p. 284.

  28 “dazzle, but close to give”: Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Panorama of Paris (1999), p. 132.

  29 lackeys: Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Vol. 3: The Perspective of the World, p. 328.

  30 Dumas lost his lackey at sea: Alexandre Dumas to Marie-Louise, June 18, 1798, MAD.

  31 “long and brown”: Alexandre Dumas (père), Les trois mousquetaires, vol. 1, p. 6.

  32 “so stunning [and] appalling”: Mercier, Panorama of Paris, p. 45.

  33 fishwives and peddlers: Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Paris, Vol. 2 (1817), p. 151.

  34 “M. le Marquis wasn’t living”: M. Delisson to the Count de Maulde, June 25, 1786, ADPC 10J35.

  35 “France is to fashion”: Mrs. John Melville, “Point d’Alençon,” Overland Monthly 4 (Jan. 1870), p. 64.

  36 “A carriage is the grand object”: Mercier, Paris, Vol. 2, p. 205.

  37 “is necessarily filthy, black”: Mercier, Panorama of Paris, p. 41.

  38 diamonds: Mercier, Paris, Vol. 2, pp. 295–96.

  39 “No, no, this is not me” and “back from the dead”: Letter cited by Robert Landru, À propos d’Alexandre Dumas, pp. 66–70.

  CHAPTER 6: BLACK COUNT IN THE CITY OF LIGHT

  1 rue Étienne: Certificate with Dumas’s address in Paris, rue Étienne (spelled “Estienne”), undated, BNF NAF 24641.

  2 Paris’s remodeling: Eric Hazan and David Fernbach, The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps, pp. 14–15; Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City, p. 180.

  3 “The Palais Royal was the heart and soul”: Johannes Willms, Paris, Capital of Europe: From the Revolution to the Belle Epoque, p. 5.

  4 palace of Cardinal Richelieu: Jones, p. 222.

  5 went to the Orléans family: Henry Sutherland Edwards, Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, Vol. 1, p. 166.

  6 “In a single day”: Jones, p. 193.

  7 mesmerism: Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, p. 161.

  8 Philippe Curtius and Marie Tussaud: Pamela M. Pileam, Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks, pp. 17, 23–24.

  9 Parisian cafés: W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789–1914, pp. 209–10; Thomas Okey, Paris and Its Story, p. 334; Schama, pp. 135–36.

  10 Marx and Engels at the Palais Royal: Karl Baedeker, Paris and Its Environs, 6th ed., p. 18.

  11 “The chairs, which are placed”: Melchior von Grimm and Denis Diderot, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, Vol. 2, pp. 535–37, in Willms, p. 6.

  12 “brown and mellow” eyes: MM, p. 23; Hippolyte Parigot, Alexandre Dumas Père, p. 9.

  13 Nicolet’s Theater: F. W. J. Hemmings, Theatre and State in France: 1760–1905, pp. 2, 27–40.

  14 replacing a sick leading man with a monkey: Ferdinand Hoefer, Nouvelle biographie générale, Vol. 37.

  15 incident at the Nicolet theater: Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, testimony about the incident, September 15, 1784, BNF NAF 24641. See also Jean-Pierre Titon’s testimony, September 15, 1784, BNF NAF 24641. Dumas’s testimony provides details about the racial insults that cannot be found in M. Titon’s testimony.

  16 Thomas-Alexandre attending a performance: Dumas, Nicolet incident testimony.

  17 “a very beautiful Creole”: MM, p. 18.

  18 two armed companions: Or only one? Dumas, in his testimony, mentions only one man with Titon, but Titon says he was with two men.

  19 “You are quite beautiful”: Dumas, Nicolet incident testimony.

  20 “I would be pleased”: Ibid.

&
nbsp; 21 M. Titon’s position in the West Indies: Several letters and military notes about him, 1779, ANOM COL E 379bis.

  22 “like Americans?” and the following eight quotations: Dumas, Nicolet incident testimony.

  23 “Oh, I beg your pardon”: MM, p. 18.

  24 “every smile an insult”: Alexandre Dumas (père), Les trois mousquetaires, Vol. 1, p. 9.

  25 declaration by the marshals; Thomas-Alexandre freed: The marshals’ testimony about the incident at the Nicolet theater, September 16, 1784, BNF NAF 24641.

  CHAPTER 7: A QUEEN’S DRAGOON

  1 the marriage: Marriage contract between Marie Retou and Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, February 13, 1786, CGH.

  2 “marriage caused a cooling-off”: MM, p. 21.

  3 money problems with the new stepmother: Judgment in the dispute between Marie Retou and Thomas Rethoré/Retoré, November 22, 1786, AN LX465. See also Dumas to Marie-Louise, September 15, 1796, MAD Safe.

  4 “it is very dishonorable”: Horace Walpole to Richard West, in Eliakim Littell and Robert S. Littell, Littell’s Living Age, Vol. 78, p. 307.

  5 Thomas-Alexandre enlists: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2, 1786, CGH.

  6 “[My father] told him”: MM, pp. 21–22.

  7 first record of the name: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2, 1786, CGH.

  8 “Dumas, Alexandre”: Dumas signed his name “Alexandre,” but the military administration kept referring to him as “Thomas Alexandre” (either “Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie” or “Dumas”) well into the 1790s.

  9 “Thomas Retoré”: The name is spelled Rethoré in the transcription of a sentence dated November 22, 1786, AN LX465. It is spelled Rettoré in legal notes about a dispute between Dumas and Castillon, August 9, 1786, AN Y1787.

  10 “son of Antoine and Cecette Dumas”: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2, 1786, CGH.

  11 “Native of Jemerie”: Registry of the Dragoons in the Regiment of the Queen, Dumas entry, June 2, 1786, CGH.

  12 “from Jeremie, in America”: Military certificate, September 9, 1792, SHD 7YD91.

  13 “show proof”: “Règlement portant que nul ne pourra être proposé à des souslieutenances s’il n’a fait preuve de quatre générations de noblesse”—the so-called “Segur ordinance,” named after the Count de Segur, the minister who passed it on May 22, 1781.

  14 Antoine died: Death certificate of Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, June 16, 1786, MAD Safe.

  15 a letter to the Count de Maulde: M. Delisson to the Count de Maulde, June 25, 1786, ADPC 10J35.

  16 “The death of M. le Marquis”: Document recording the sale of properties owned by the Count de Maulde, August 12, 1786, ADPC 10J35.

  17 four-century-long connection: The Manoir de la Pailleterie in Bielleville was built in 1602. Jacques Vauquelin, Châteaux, manoirs, monuments et sites de la région bolbécaise, p. 92.

  18 a serious sum: Document about the sale of properties owned by the Count de Maulde, August 12, 1786, ADPC 10J35.

  19 dragoons: Commandant Bucquoy, Dragons et guides d’état-major; René Chartrand and Eugène Leliepvre, Louis XV’s Army (1): Cavalry and Dragoons; Erik A. Lund, War for the Every Day: Generals, Knowledge, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, 1680–1740, p. 71.

  20 got their name from carbine muskets: Auguste Scheler, Dictionnaire d’étymologie française d’après les resultats de la science moderne (1888), p. 162.

  21 musketeers: Richard Mowery Andrews, Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735–1789: The System of Criminal Justice, Vol. 1, pp. 38–39; André Corvisier and John Childs, eds., A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, p. 334.

  22 they got poorer horses: Lund, p. 71.

  23 dragoons battled smugglers: Joseph Tiré de Cléron, Abrégé de la vie de Louis Mandrin, chef de contrebandiers en France, pp. 28–30. Much as anti-drug agents sometimes fall victim to the temptation of trafficking, dragoons were sometimes implicated in salt-smuggling rackets (see Roland Mousnier, The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789, p. 459).

  24 France’s so-called iron belt: Michael Wolfe, Walled Towns and the Shaping of France, p. 151.

  25 “The liberty that he had known” and the next two quotations: MM, pp. 23–24.

  26 weight of a musket: Encyclopédie Didérot d’Alembert, Vol. 15 (1782), p. 568; Aide-mémoire à l’usage des officiers d’artillerie de France (1819), p. 562; Captain Gervais, À la conquête de l’Europe (1939), cited in Terry Crowdy, French Revolutionary Infantryman, 1791–1802 (2003), p. 13.

  27 the dragoons’ Norman horses: Robert Landru, in À propos d’Alexandre Dumas (p. 80), mentions that the Queen’s Dragoons in Laon used “chevaux normands.”

  28 weight of a Norman horse: “Site officiel du Syndicat national des éleveurs et utilisateurs de chevaux Cob Normand,” www.​cobnormand.​com.

  29 “many feats”: Arthur Davidson, Alexandre Dumas (père): His Life and Works, p. 4.

  30 it seems impossible: By comparison, the current world record for lifting weights is 580 pounds hoisted by Rezazadeh Hossein, in a clean and jerk lift during the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics. International Weightlifting Federation, http://​www.​iwf.​net.

  31 duels illegal: Philippe-Antoine Merlin, Répertoire universel et raisonné de jurisprudence, Vol. 5 (1827), p. 492; Fougeroux de Campigneulles, Histoire des duels anciens et modernes, Vol. 1, p. 310.

  32 gashed twice in the head: MM, p. 54.

  33 “My father had hardly rejoined”: Ibid., p. 28.

  34 crowds in Grenoble pelted royal troops: J. A. Félix Fauré, Les assemblées de Vizille & de Romans en Dauphiné durant l’année 1788, pp. 102–15.

  35 freakish weather returned: Charlotte Julia von Leyden Blennerhassett, Madame de Staël: Her Friends and Her Influence in Politics and Literature, Vol. 1, p. 273.

  36 French Guards: Andrews, pp. 38–41, 520.

  37 population of 650,000: Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City, p. 177.

  38 fewer than ten thousand men: Andrews, p. 38.

  39 “We are Citizens before Soldiers”: Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, p. 375.

  40 “The ferment at Paris”: Arthur Young, Travels During the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 …, Vol. 1, pp. 249–50.

  41 Charleville muskets: Schama, pp. 388–89.

  42 king met the new Paris municipal government: Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution Française, Vol. 2, pp. 418–22.

  43 dragoons stationed in Laon: “Régiments de dragons,” L’Union Nationale de l’Arme Blindée Cavalerie Chars website, http://​unabcc.​free.​fr/​historique/​régiments-​de-​dragons.

  44 Claude Labouret with the National Guard: Labouret is identified as “Commandant de la Garde, Nationale de Villers-Cotterêts & propriétaire de l’hôtel de l’Ecu” when his daughter marries Dumas. Dumas’s and Marie-Louise’s marriage certificate, November 28, 1792, MAD Safe.

  BOOK TWO CHAPTER 8: SUMMERS OF REVOLUTION

  1 Great Fear: David Andress, The French Revolution and the People, pp. 68–69, 94, 113–15; Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, pp. 428–33; Donald M. G. Sutherland, The French Revolution and Empire, pp. 65–68.

  2 famine pact: Andress, p. 205. There were also theories that nobles were behind the alleged brigands (see Sutherland, p. 67; Schama p. 429).

  3 destitution and bread prices: Sutherland, pp. 46, 50–51.

  4 raised expectations: François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, pp. 110–11.

  5 backstory of opportunism: Sutherland, pp. 46, 65–68; Schama, p. 433.

  6 brigands and village bells: Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789, p. 156.

  7 brisk aristocratic tourist trade: Ernest Roch, “L’ancien château royal” and “Le Général Alexandre Dumas”; André Moreau-Néret, “L’Hostellerye de l’Es
cu de France,” p. 136.

  8 best hunting in France: Louis-Ferdinand-Alfred Maury, Les forêts de la Gaule et de l’ancienne France, p. 165.

  9 brief family embarassment: Roch, “L’ancien château royal,” pp. 306–7.

  10 sent for the dragoons: Roch, “Le Général Alexandre Dumas,” pp. 89–90.

  11 twenty dragoons: Roch, “La Reine Dragons,” pp. 74–76.

  12 One in particular: Letter from a citizen of Villers-Cotterêts to another from Pierrefonds, cited in Roch, “Le Général Alexandre Dumas,” pp. 90–91.

  13 nearly half a head taller: See physical descriptions in Pierre Nougaret, Anecdotes militaires, anciennes & modernes de tous les peuples, Vol. 4, p. 260; Jean-Baptiste Courcelles, “Dumas (Alexandre Davy),” p. 502; René-Nicolas Desgenettes, Souvenirs de la fin du XVIIIe siècle et du commencement du XIXe, Vol. 3, p. 124.

  14 “Dear Julie”: Roch, “Le Général Alexandre Dumas,” p. 91.

  15 Hôtel de l’Ecu: Moreau-Néret, “L’Hostellerye de l’Escu de France,” p. 92.

  16 Viscount de Noailles: “Séance du 4 août 1789,” La Tribune Française (August 4–13, 1789), p. 47.

  17 to consider abolishing slavery: “Assemblée Nationale, Séance du 27 Juin 1789,” Journal des débats, des lois du pouvoir legislatif et des actes du gouvernement (1971), p. 69.

  18 Society of the Friends of the Blacks: Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot, La Société des Amis des Noirs, 1788–1799.

  19 a “moment of patriotic drunkenness”: Marquis de Ferrières, Correspondance inédite, p. 114.

  20 “the representatives of the French people”: Declaration of Human and Civic Rights of 1789. The Declaration has become the preamble to the current French Constitution.

  21 Jefferson and the Rights of Man: William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 284–85; Harlow G. Unger, Lafayette, pp. 233–34.

  22 “Where is that villain?”: James de Chambrier, Marie-Antoinette, reine de France, Vol. 1, p. 62.

  23 performance space for the Comédie-Française: Francis Miltoun, Royal Palaces and Parks of France, p. 112.

  24 National Assembly in the Manège: Armand Brette, Histoire des édifices où sont siégé les assemblées parlementaires, pp. 158–68.

  25 “I have always been afraid”: Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, July 11, 1789, in Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 2, p. 496.