The Count of Monte Cristo and Napoleon
Edmond Dantès is jailed for carrying a letter from Elba, and meets the Abbé Faria in the Château d'If.
The book
Alexandre Dumas published The Count of Monte Cristo as a newspaper serial in 1844–46.
The Napoleon connection
The story starts in Marseille in February 1815. Napoleon has been exiled to the island of Elba off Italy, and France has its king back. Young sailor Edmond Dantès, about to be made captain and to marry his fiancée Mercédès, has stopped at Elba on his dying captain's orders and is carrying a letter for Bonapartists in Paris.
Three men who envy him (Danglars, who wants his job; Fernand, who wants Mercédès; and the cowardly neighbor Caderousse) send an anonymous denunciation calling him a Bonapartist agent. He is arrested at his own betrothal feast. The prosecutor, Villefort, sees that the letter is addressed to his own father, a Bonapartist, and buries Dantès in the island fortress of the Château d'If to protect himself.
Days later Napoleon really does escape Elba and returns for the Hundred Days, ending at Waterloo in June 1815. In that political chaos, a prisoner like Dantès is forgotten.
The Abbé Faria
After years alone, Dantès hears scratching: another prisoner, the Abbé Faria, an Italian priest digging an escape tunnel, has dug into the wrong cell. Faria becomes his teacher. He teaches Dantès languages, history, science and mathematics, and he works out, by pure reasoning, who betrayed him. He also tells him of a hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo.
When Faria dies, Dantès takes his place in the burial sack, is thrown into the sea, escapes, finds the treasure, and returns as the Count of Monte Cristo to take revenge.
(This website is named for the Abbé: the teacher in the next cell.)
Key facts
- Monte Cristo opens in 1815 with Napoleon exiled on Elba
- Dantès is jailed in the Château d'If for carrying a letter from Elba
- The Abbé Faria teaches Dantès everything and reveals the treasure of Monte Cristo