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Alexandre Dumas is one of the titans of world literature, writing fantastic adventures of musketeers and prisoners seeking terrible revenge. History has unfairly forgotten his father, a truly remarkable soldier treated shabbily by posterity.
The eldest Alex Dumas was born in the colony of Saint-Domingue, son of a renegade marquis and a slave. He grew up wild in free in the hills around the port of Jeremie, and then went with his father to France, where he lived a style that only a truly decadent French heir of the blood could manage. When the money ran out, Alex enlisted as a private of dragoons. He was a skilled rider, deadly swordsman, and courageous leader, who's natural abilities saw him promoted to corporal. The ancien regime was no friend to the black man, with its wealth maintained by an empire of slavery, but individuals of ability could thrive.
Then came the revolution, and Alex Dumas found his calling. A celebrated exploit on the Belgium frontier made him a valuable recruit for a Free Legion of Americans, mostly 'coloreds' from the Caribbean who served the revolution. In a single bound, Dumas was promoted to Lt. Colonel, and then to Colonel and Brigadier General as the Committee of Public Safety decapitated generals for the anti-revolutionary "crime" of losing a battle. Dumas's greatest moment was as commander of the 40,000 man Army of Alps, where he organized spring victories over the Piedmontese that opened the gate to Italy. He was reassigned to the brutal counter-insurgency in the Vendée, where he tried to restore some manner of honor and humanity to troops which had come to regard royalist Frenchmen as subhuman. For all its many crimes, Revolutionary France was the first color-blind society in a thousand years, one that attempted to live up to the promise of "Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternitie", rather than shoving slavery under constitutional compromises.
Dumas somehow survived the purges of the Terror, but he could not survive the ambitions of a certain Captain of Artillery, who had secured command of the Army of Italy. Dumas served under Napoleon, again bravely leading from the front and personally securing key victories, but failed to ingratiate himself with the coming ceasar, and was written out of the official dispatches. He was chief of cavalry on the ill-fated Egyptian expedition, and things went from bad to worse, as his ship home wound up wrecked in the ardently anti-Republican Kingdom of Naples. Dumas was imprisoned for years by that shaky regime, until another invasion by Napoleon liberated him. But his health was broken, and a combination of personal animosity and rising imperial racism denied him opportunities for further service or even a pension. He died when the young Alexandre Dumas was four, leaving a titanic memory in his son's mind.
Reiss depicts an age of idealism, and a larger than life character who has been unjustly forgotten, but there's a lack of verve that keeps me from giving this the full five stars. It's a good book, and the authoritative account of Alex Dumas, but the essence of the Revolution eludes it.
The eldest Alex Dumas was born in the colony of Saint-Domingue, son of a renegade marquis and a slave. He grew up wild in free in the hills around the port of Jeremie, and then went with his father to France, where he lived a style that only a truly decadent French heir of the blood could manage. When the money ran out, Alex enlisted as a private of dragoons. He was a skilled rider, deadly swordsman, and courageous leader, who's natural abilities saw him promoted to corporal. The ancien regime was no friend to the black man, with its wealth maintained by an empire of slavery, but individuals of ability could thrive.
Then came the revolution, and Alex Dumas found his calling. A celebrated exploit on the Belgium frontier made him a valuable recruit for a Free Legion of Americans, mostly 'coloreds' from the Caribbean who served the revolution. In a single bound, Dumas was promoted to Lt. Colonel, and then to Colonel and Brigadier General as the Committee of Public Safety decapitated generals for the anti-revolutionary "crime" of losing a battle. Dumas's greatest moment was as commander of the 40,000 man Army of Alps, where he organized spring victories over the Piedmontese that opened the gate to Italy. He was reassigned to the brutal counter-insurgency in the Vendée, where he tried to restore some manner of honor and humanity to troops which had come to regard royalist Frenchmen as subhuman. For all its many crimes, Revolutionary France was the first color-blind society in a thousand years, one that attempted to live up to the promise of "Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternitie", rather than shoving slavery under constitutional compromises.
Dumas somehow survived the purges of the Terror, but he could not survive the ambitions of a certain Captain of Artillery, who had secured command of the Army of Italy. Dumas served under Napoleon, again bravely leading from the front and personally securing key victories, but failed to ingratiate himself with the coming ceasar, and was written out of the official dispatches. He was chief of cavalry on the ill-fated Egyptian expedition, and things went from bad to worse, as his ship home wound up wrecked in the ardently anti-Republican Kingdom of Naples. Dumas was imprisoned for years by that shaky regime, until another invasion by Napoleon liberated him. But his health was broken, and a combination of personal animosity and rising imperial racism denied him opportunities for further service or even a pension. He died when the young Alexandre Dumas was four, leaving a titanic memory in his son's mind.
Reiss depicts an age of idealism, and a larger than life character who has been unjustly forgotten, but there's a lack of verve that keeps me from giving this the full five stars. It's a good book, and the authoritative account of Alex Dumas, but the essence of the Revolution eludes it.