The Black Count Pdf Summary Reviews By Tom Reiss

Quick Navigation

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

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave — who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

READ

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

Urenna

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

This historical biography is based on the life of the famous author, Alexandre Dumas’s father, Thomas-Alexandre, known as Alex Dumas.

After time spent in the War of the Polish Succession that ended in 1738, Frenchman Alexandre (Antoine) Davy de la Pailleterie, a future marquis, left France to seek his fortune in Saint-Domingue, the island of Hispaniola. At that time, the Spaniards owned, Santo Domingo, the east side of the island, and the French owned the west, Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Because of sugar planting, Saint-Domingue was one of the wealthiest islands in the world.

Antoine moved in with his younger brother, Charles, who had married well and became a well-known sugar planter. Antoine scrounged off his brother for a decade, kept several slave mistresses, and refused to work. Charles and Antoine’s relationship ended violently. Antoine fled with three of his brothers’ slaves, one of which was his latest mistress. To probably resist arrest, Antoine moved up into the highlands, a densely wooded mountains, eventually settling in Jérémie, an isolated area of Haiti. There, he changed his name to Antoine de l’Isle—Antoine of the island.

Antoine purchased a mistress for a very high price, Marie Cessette Dumas. Marie Cessette bore him four children. The eldest child was Antoine’s favorite, Thomas-Alexandre, born in 1762. When Antoine returned to France, he would eventually send for fifteen year old Thomas-Alexandre. Antoine sold Marie Cessette and their other three children.

In France, Antoine made sure his son was well educated. Thomas-Alexandre became an excellent swordsman. As a young man, Thomas-Alexandre, enlisted in the dragoons, and rejected his father’s surname, Davy de la Pailleterie, and took his mother’s surname, Dumas. He would never again be known as Thomas. Instead, he used Alexandre (Alex) Dumas. He even listed his father as Antoine Dumas.

As a Lieutenant Colonel, Alex, who was later commissioned as a General, married Marie-Louise Labouret of Villers-Cotterets, France. They would have three children: two daughters and Alexandre Dumas, Jr. their last child, the future author, was born 10 years later.

The book is filled with an enormous amount of French history, some of which includes the shrewd General Bonaparte. At one point, General Dumas and Bonaparte fought together. General Dumas sailed to Egypt with Bonaparte.

General Dumas appeared to be a loving husband and good father. On the front, he was a courageous, strong-minded, intuitive leader, unbiased toward his troops. From his men he received much devotion and admiration. His flaw was sometimes not using tact and being too critical. He had high expectations of a soldier’s performance. Yet his bold criticism toward inept superiors or those favored by superiors cost him promotions or unkindness later in life.

General Napoleon showed farsightedness concerning his own future ambitions. However, he appeared to be intolerant of criticism expressed by General Dumas, and inflated his own self-importance when he and Dumas were generals.

Napoleon was willing to cruelly exploit others for his own gain, especially concerning the Rights of Man decree. When Napoleon became emperor, the law, previously decreed by former King Louis XVI of France, April 4, 1792, which provided citizenship for all property owning free men of color on the islands, became invalid in 1800. In France, interracial marriages as well as interracial education were outlawed. People of color who had lived free in France were to be rounded up and sent back to the colonies. They could no longer live in Paris or the surrounding suburbs. This appears like history repeating itself. German citizens had experienced this during the Second World War, and currently Dominicans of Haitian descent are being denied citizenship because of their place of birth.

Without giving too much away, this is a superb historical biography, well written, full of information, and a pleasure to read. The history in France and on the island, Saint-Domingue, will amaze you. I took my time reading this book. Surprisingly, Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, incorporated some of his father’s famous expeditions when writing his book. The author, Alexandre Dumas, expresses a genuine, tender love and admiration for his father, General Dumas. This book deserves five stars.

Steven Ledbetter

5.0 out of 5 stars as a youth I had enjoyed “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers”
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2015

Verified Purchase

I read quite a few biographies, but it has been a long time since I was so captivated by one, especially a biography of someone I had not previously heard about. Still, as a youth I had enjoyed “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers”, and when I learned that the subject of Tom Reiss’s book was the father of Alexander Dumas and the model in many ways of Edmond Dantes, the self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, I decided to check it out.
The writing is vivid and the story is filled with amazing incidents and dramatic twists. The son of a ne’er-do-well French aristocrat who went to Saint Domingue (Haiti) when it was still a French possession, and a black local woman who would have had essentially no status, Alex Dumas had the most astonishing life. Taken to France by his father shortly before the Revolution, he benefited from the kind of classical education that an aristocrat could expect, and became a superb horseman and swordsman. When his father (almost inevitably) had run through all his wealth and most of his property, he told the young man that he could no longer support him, but that he would get him into a military position as an officer. Alex, who was sympathetic to the early stages of the French Revolution, broke entirely with his aristocratic father, refusing even to use his name. He shortened his given name to Alex and took his mother’s maiden name, Dumas. And he refused to accept a position arranged by his father. Instead he enlisted as a private in what was regarded as a relatively unimportant military branch. There he proved himself so able, and such an effective leader of men, that he was repeatedly promoted, eventually rising to brigadier general.
All of this happened as the French Revolution was unfolding, and Dumas was a fervent supporter of it, especially when France became the first slave-holding country to decree that all slaves would be freed and that blacks would be equal with other French citizens. His military career included some heroic and daring exploits, the overcoming of extremely difficult problems, all of which redounded to his credit and increasing fame until the rise of Napoleon, with whom Dumas worked in Northern Italy. Though appreciating Dumas’s bravery and leadership at first, Napoleon evidently became envious of his success, of the way in which troops followed him, and perhaps of the fact that Dumas was a good foot taller than he.
The tragic climax of the story comes when Alex Dumas was cast into a prison in southern Italy for several years, under horrible treatment that left him physically broken, but with the same extraordinary spirit. By this time, Napoleon was taking no chances on Dumas’s ability to arouse ferver among those he led, so no pains were taken to extricate him from this situation for years. Here lies the core of the situation of his son’s famous novel. When Dumas finally was released and returned home, not only did Napoleon refuse all his requests to assign him a useful position, but the position of blacks–even including those with French citizenship–had deteriorated, and the former freed slaves in French Caribbean territories were once again brought under the condition of slavery.
The young Alexandre Dumas adored his father, who died when he was only 4, but he heard many stories about him from his mother, which he turned into his own biographical account in addition to using many incidents in his novels, especially “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Tom Reiss undertook far-reaching research to amplify and correct the son’s work. He occasionally explains where and how his researches set the story straight (he does this in a very engaging way, without a whiff of dusty academicism), and he makes the case for Alex Dumas as one of the most colorful and fascinating figures of the French Revolution.

About Tom Reiss Author Of The Black Count pdf Book

TOM REISS Author Of The Black Count pdf Book, is also the author of the celebrated international bestseller The Orientalist. His biographical pieces have appeared The New Yorker, The New York Times and other publications. He lives with his wife and daughters in New York City.