Dumas's father, the general who defied Napoleon
General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, born enslaved in Saint-Domingue, fell out with Napoleon and was imprisoned, the seed of Monte Cristo.
The general
Alexandre Dumas's father was Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (1762–1806), born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), the son of a French marquis and an enslaved African woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas. His father brought him to France, where he joined the army as a private under his mother's surname.
In the Revolution he rose spectacularly to become a general, the highest-ranking man of color in any European army of his time, famous for his size, strength and courage.
Napoleon
He served under Napoleon in the invasion of Egypt in 1798 and openly criticized the campaign. The two fell out. Sailing home in 1799, his ship put in at Taranto in the Kingdom of Naples, where he was taken prisoner and held for about two years in a fortress dungeon, falling ill (he believed he was being poisoned). Napoleon did nothing to help him and never gave him his back pay or pension after his release. He died in 1806, when his son Alexandre was three.
Into the novel
A man unjustly imprisoned in a fortress, abandoned, betrayed by those in power: Dumas's father's story echoes through Edmond Dantès. Tom Reiss told the full story in The Black Count (2012), which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Key facts
- Dumas's father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was born in Saint-Domingue to a French noble and an enslaved woman
- He fell out with Napoleon in Egypt and was imprisoned at Taranto, 1799 to 1801
- Tom Reiss, The Black Count (2012, Pulitzer)