Published by Vintage / Crown, 2012, 414 pages. Published in the US as The Black Count—Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

We know Alexandre Dumas’s novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, as a work of fiction. But he based a lot of it on the life of his father, also Alexandre Dumas. The Black Count is a biography of Alexandre Dumas (the father, known as Alex Dumas), whose life was an extraordinary one.

Alex Dumas was born in 1762 in what was then Saint-Domingue (later Haiti), a French colony. His father was Antoine, the Marquis de la Pailleterie—who had gone to Saint-Domingue to seek his fortune—and his mother was a Black slave. When his son was born, the Marquis was hiding from the law in the Saint-Domingue mountains. When Antoine eventually decided to move back to France, he took his young son with him.

The boy was raised in luxury. This was a time when the mulatto children of Frenchmen were accepted in French society. So Dumas grew up much as any other aristocratic boy, but his race gave him a different perspective from the others. “Dumas—the son of a marquis and a slave—had the unique perspective of being from the highest and lowest ranks of society at once.”

Eventually Dumas—whose real name was Thomas-Alexandre Davy de La Pailleterie—rejected both his father’s name and title, preferring to use his mother’s surname. When he joined the French army as Alex Dumas, it was at the lowest rank. Before long, he became known for his strength, brilliance and daring. By the time he was 31, he was a general in the French army, and married to a mayor’s daughter with whom he had three children, including the future author, Alexandre Dumas.

Then came the French Revolution, and Dumas managed to stay on the right side, even though he was an aristocrat. He was loved and admired by his men, and was a fervent believer in the Revolution and its principles of egalitarianism. He became part of the Revolution’s army and was responsible for winning several battles against its enemies. It was there that he met Napoleon, also a general—a meeting that was to have a profound effect on his life.

Initially, Napoleon admired Dumas and did not hesitate to praise his qualities. But Napoleon was an ambitious man, very keen to prove himself, and was not best pleased with Dumas’s successes. When Napoleon became leader of France, crowning himself emperor, he insisted on expanding his kingdom by conquering Malta and Egypt. Although Dumas thought this was an ill-judged decision, he accompanied Napoleon on these “conquests”.

The Egyptians resented the invaders and fought back, making life difficult for the French. Napoleon retreated to France, leaving Dumas in charge of what was clearly a failed enterprise. When Dumas finally managed to board a ship, the Belle Maltaise, to return home, the ship sprung a leak and had to dock at the nearest port, which was Taranto, part of the Kingdom of Naples.

The queen of Naples was Marie-Antoinette’s sister, who hated the French Revolution and all that it stood for. However, the Naples monarchy had been overthrown by revolutionaries, so those aboard the Belle Maltaise expected a warm welcome. But the revolutionaries were in turn overthrown, and Naples—and therefore Taranto—was now in the hands of the monarchy and the Church, both sworn enemies of the French Revolution.

This turn of events led to Dumas being imprisoned in Taranto for two years. He was finally freed, and returned a broken man. His son grew up in Napolean’s France, which was very different from that of his father, without the advantages his father had.

This is a fascinating story. Dumas comes across as larger than life. A 1797 profile of him said he was “one of the handsomest men you could ever meet”. Dumas was a skilled fencer and a brilliant military strategist, famous for pulling off victories even when his army looked certain to lose. He was also a man of principle, believing in equality and in treating the enemy humanely. He forbade his troops from looting those they had defeated and raping their women.

He was six feet tall at a time when the average height was five feet and a half. This did not go down well with Napoleon—in Egypt, people thought Dumas was the leader, an assumption that Dumas was to pay for later, when after leaving the army, he was not awarded a military pension, and his widow and children lived in poverty following his death.

In telling Dumas’s story, Tom Reiss paints a picture of the turbulent politics of that period. He charts the French Revolution from its idealistic beginnings to its blood-soaked end. I had no idea that so many wars were fought on France’s borders between the army of the Revolution and supporters of monarchy in general, and especially of the French monarchy. Dumas played a huge role in these wars, helping defeat their enemies.

This is a well-researched biography that wears its scholarship lightly. Reiss tells a good story, and the book moves between Dumas’s life and Reiss’s own experiences in tracking down Dumas’s papers. What I found particularly interesting was the fluctuating fortunes of people of colour and society’s attitudes towards them.

It is telling that it does not seem to be common knowledge that the renowned French author Alexandre Dumas was a quarter Black, and that his father, who was such an important part of France’s history, is not more widely celebrated.

In this book, Reiss sets this right, and paints a vivid picture of General Alexandre Dumas and his times.

Read my review of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.