Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
"He had stopped at the head of the bridge, and was holding it alone against the whole squadron; and, as owing to the narrowness of the bridge, not more than two or three could get at him abreast, he sabered them as fast as they came up. I lay there astounded… the General had killed seven or eight men, and wounded double that number." - Col. Paul Ferdinand Stanislas Dermoncourt, French Dragoon
The collected works of Alexandre Dumas contain some of the most badass adventures stories in history, and to this day Dumas remains one of the most widely-read and beloved French adventure novelists of all time. The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo are hardcore slow-burn revenge novels that swash more than a few buckles, and, while I do occasionally have a few issues with the protagonists of these stories taking their damn sweet time in their quests for bloody sword-swinging vengeance, nobody can deny that these books contain a non-stop barrage of awesome escapes, hardcore swordfights, and badass 18th-century adventures while also being thick enough that you could effectively use them in hand-to-hand combat if the occasion ever arose.
Did you know, however, that many of Dumas' protagonists were based off of his father, a tough-as-nails French cavalry officer so hardcore that his enemies referred to him as "The Black Devil"?
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the famous author, was a Haitian-born war hero who enlisted in the military as a private and rose through the ranks to become not only France's first black General, but also the only black military commander in history to serve as the overall commander of a predominantly-white Army-sized force until Colin Powell took over the American military for Iraq Episode 2 nearly 250 years after Dumas's death. He was big, tough, possessed almost superhuman strength, was unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat, fought swordfighting duels in Paris, once single-handedly held a bridge against over a dozen Austrian dragoons while dismounted and armed with nothing but a saber, and was not only the father of France's greatest adventure novelist, but also grandfather to a world-renowned playwright, and great-great grandfather of a badass fencer who wone six Fencing medals across three Olympic Games (including two golds) and is currently in the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
He also inspired art that looks like this:
It's pronounced Dumahhhhhhs!
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was born in present-day Haiti on March 25th, 1762. He was the son of Aleandre-Antoine Davy, the French Marquis de la Pailleterie, and a woman named Marie-Cessette Dumas, who may or may not have been a slave depending on who you ask. When writing his dad's life story, Alexandre Dumas says that the Marquis and Marie were married, but no real evidence of this exists and Alexandre was like 5 years old when his dad died and never met his mother so you kind of have to take that stuff with a grain of salt, so who knows I guess. It doesn't really matter, because Marie dies in 1776, and 14-year-old Thomas-Alexandre decides to leave Haiti and move in to his family estate in Paris. There, he received fencing lessons, went to awesome parties, and was trained in Good Aristocratic Shit like how to ride a horse like a boss and how to mack on hot babes. He grew to be six-foot-two, which was super huge for a guy in the 18th century, and he was also insanely strong – it's said that he could stick four fingers on his hand into four musket barrels and then lift all four muskets, holding them in a perfect T-pose without wavering. That's pretty strong. He also kicked the shit out of some asshole kid in a sword duel over a girl when he was 22, and then, a year later, he fought three guys in duels in the same day – he won two and got slashed pretty good in the third one, but, hey, you can't win 'em all.
Well Thomas and his Dad hit a bit of a rough patch in 1786, when the 70-something Marquis decided he was going to marry the 19-year-old housemaid and Thomas was like, dude, what the fuck, YOU'RE NOT MY MOM. Dad cut Thomas off, and so, to make ends meet and make the most of the fact that he was gigantic, jacked, and good at chopping people apart with edged weapons, he decided he'd enlist in the French Army.
Dad was like, ok, fine, but one condition – I'm not going to have my badass family name be used by some filthy Enlisted Man, so if you're going to join the army as a goddamn Private you need to stop using Davy as your last name.
Thomas-Alexandre agreed. He officially took his mother's maiden name, and went from Thomas-Alexandre Davy to Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. He never changed it back, and now the name Dumas is associated with some of the most famous writers, playwrights, and military commanders in French History.
He also had doggos… I couldn't find a lot of great info on them, but I'm sure they were good bois
So in 1786 Thomas-Alexandre Dumas enlisted in the French Army at the age of 24. When the Wars of the French Revolution began a few years later, he was sent to Italy to fight the Prussians and Austrians in the Alps, where his strength, swordsmanship, and tactical acumen helped him quickly rise through the ranks. After hearing about one particular encounter where Dumas personally beat the shit out of like a dozen Austrians single-handedly, fellow badass Chevalier de Saint-Georges immediately promoted Dumas to be his second-in-command of La Legion Americaine, an all-black unit of badass revolutionary warriors intent on crushing Monarchists from Barcelona to Berlin. By 1793 he was in command of the Army of the Alps, overseeing a force of 53,000 fighting men, and earned more fame and glory for his daring maneuvers that helped capture two critical mountain passes through the Alps from heavy Austrian and Prussian opposition.
There was a brief interlude where Dumas was called back to Paris after some Jacobin dipshits were like, "well actually that guy is part aristocrat because of his dad hurrrr", but luckily for Dumas the Parliament of France got sick of Robespierre's bullshit and sliced his fucking head off with a guillotine, and the timely beheading of an unrelated dickhead freed Dumas up to go back to the battlefront and continue kicking Germans in the head with a steel-toed boot.
His greatest exploit came in Italy around 1796, while he was serving as a Divisional commander under a French General by the name of Napoleon Fucking Bonaparte. Ordered to take the city of Klausen from heavy Austrian resistance, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas – then a Division-commanding General, remember – personally led a badass cavalry charge at the head of the elite French Fifth Dragoons Regiment. Leading from the front, he charged the Austrians, routing them in a melee, capturing the city, and taking over 1500 enemy POWs, but then, as he was doing mop-up duty around the town, he ended up falling into a trap – as soon as his skirmishers crossed a bridge they were ambushed by a detachment of Austrian cavalry that numbered somewhere between 12 and 30 guys. The Austrians routed the French cavalry and shot Dumas's horse out from under him, but the big badass General refused to go down with out a fight. Using his dead horse as cover from musketfire General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas drew his sabre and stared down the charging enemy like Jon Snow at the Battle of Winterfell, daring the entire onrushing force to fuck with him.
They should have stayed away.
Dumas's second-in-command said it best when he said, "I saw the General lift his sabre as a thresher lifts his flail, and every time that the sabre came down a man fell."
Standing tall across the bridge, with enemy cavalry bearing down on him, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas held his ground. He crashed his blade down on all who approached him, and, even after taking a slash to the arm, a stab to the thigh, and a whack so hard to his skull that it cracked his steel helmet, Dumas continued to fight, lashing out with his sword in all directions. "I lay there astounded," said the second-in-command, who had been wounded and was laying there mostly incapacitated. "The General had killed seven or eight men, and wounded double that number."
Finally, after stomping his way through a dozen Austrians, French reinforcements showed up to succor their General. The Austrians bolted.
When approached about earning a medal, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas just said he was going to need a new sword, since he'd dented the old one up pretty good while repeatedly braining motherfuckers in the dome with it.
Napoleon personally issued him a new blade, dubbing it a "Sabre of Honor".
Napooleon dubbed him the “Cocles of Klausen”, which is a reference to Horatius Cocles, an old Roman Republic hero who did something similar… which is pretty damn cool but also makes me a little sad because I feel like I’m missing a good Cocles-related dick joke here.
Dumas commanded Napoleon's cavalry during the Egypt campaign, famously capturing the Grand Mosque during the Battle of the Pyramids, but after Lord Nelson fucked up the French Navy at Abu Bhakir Dumas did a very unwise thing and started yelling at Napoleon for being a dumbass and leaving the fleet unprotected. Which, he wasn't wrong, but also Napoleon wasn't the sort of guy who liked having his authority questioned, and before long Dumas was on a ship back home to Paris. Unfortunately for him, that ship crashed and he ended up being taken prisoner by the Kingdom of Naples and thrown into a prison hellhole for two years, but his escape was apparently so badass that a lot of Dumas scholars believe that it's probably part of the basis for the story behind the Count of Monte Cristo.
Dumas did eventually return home in 1801. He had a son, the future superstar author, but Dumas didn't live long enough to see the incredible things his family line would accomplish… he passed away on February 27, 1806, just a month from his 45th birthday.
Links:
Sources:
Dumas, Alexandre. The Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas. Trans. A.F. Davison. London: WH Allen, 1891.
Gallaher, John G.. General Alexandre Dumas. United States: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997.
Rogers, J.A. and John Henrik Clarke. World's Great Men of Color, Volume II. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Reiss, Tom. The Black Count. United Kingdom: Crown/Archetype, 2012.