What I Am Reading: "The Black Count" by Tom Reiss

This year was really the first time I paid any attention to the Dumas family, but they really had an interesting run. This run was inaugurated by Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the famous novelist. Himself the son of a slave and a dissolute aristocrat, Dumas rose to be a general during the French Revolutionary Wars, only to have his career derailed by capture and the rise of Napoleon. Thomas-Alexandre is often viewed through the lens of his son's accomplishments and greater fame; but his life story is if anything a more interesting one, encompassing the high highs of the French Revolution and the letdowns of the Napoleonic era, especially for France's slaves and people of color (known as "Americans" if they were from the colonies). His life is fortunately chronicled in considerable archival documents that biographer Tom Reiss was able to access, including a trove secreted in a safe in an old Dumas museum. I've been trying to focus my reading only secondarily on black history written by white people, but Reiss does justice to his subject; and the book is very readable yet contains few of the puns, cheeky asides, or pop culture references I abhor in general-audience history books. I also saw a review that claimed that he often filled in gaps in the record with his own imagination, but I found everything to be heavily backed by all the documentary evidence, propped up when necessary by larger historical context. The book does have an absolutely awful romance paperback cover, though.

The most important of said larger historical context is France's record on slavery and race relations, summarized at a few points in the book as the chronology elapses. Dumas was the beneficiary of one of the few periods in early modern European history when a European society can be said to have been racially progressive, perhaps even borderline-antiracist. Abolitionism had come early to France, based on historic French ideals as applied to the emancipation of European slaves of neighboring European powers; and first legally applied to African chattel slavery in 1691 when the King declared that a pair of escaped black slaves were indeed free upon having reached French soil. The Bourbon monarchy, however, was not an opponent of slavery, and had previously propagated in 1685 Le Code Noir, enumerating the ways that slaves could legally be exploited. This was joined by the Edict of October, 1716, stating that (in relation to the earlier ruling) slaves were not free just because their masters brought them to France. However, once rules were on the books, legalistically-minded liberals and abolitionists could interpret them to their advantage, and slave-owners could be found to be in violation of the law. Slaves were only allowed in France for religious or vocational education, and violations of this rule were a prime candidate for emancipation. The next large case mentioned was in 1738, challenging the rule that slaves could only marry with their master's permission, and that such marriage freed the slave. The defense was successful against a white slave-owner; they appealed to those French ideals of freedom and posited the race of the people in question to be incidental, while the prosecution foregrounded racist ideas about the inferiority of Africans.

After this success, Louis the XVth cracked down through the 1740s, closing freedom loopholes and allowing for harsher treatment of slaves. This was the brief time that the king had some political capital to use; abolitionist activity came roaring back in the 1750s. Standing in opposition was the country's leading prosecutor (including on the 1738 case), Poncet de la Grave, who insisted on registration of all blacks living in the country. His crackdown went into overdrive after the loss of the New France colony in North America, as the state's slave-dependent sugar colonies in the Caribbean now drove the economic engine. Starting in 1777, the Police de Noires created holding camps at ports where slaves could be prevented from entering the country, or people of color in the country could be held for repatriation. This racist policy was hindered only by poorly-executed administration, though it did lead to thorough demographic records.

Another decade later, during the moderate period of the French Revolution, the King and his administration granted citizenship to all blacks on the French mainland, and free blacks and men of color in the colonies; though slaves were still held on the valuable sugar plantation of Saint-Domingue. Later in the revolution, the Republican government would decisively abolish slavery in 1794 after a brief abolitionist lobbying effort. Later still, the Directorate, viewed by some as the most mediocre of the French revolutionary governments, was progressive on racial issues, with legislators of color and sponsorship of integrated elite schools. Napoleon, however, rising to power from the Directorate's ashes, was supported by the pro-slavery and plantation owner lobby - he invaded Haiti and captured Toussaint Louverture, who died in prison, and rolled back educational, citizenship, and military advancements for people of color. He re-instituted slavery in 1802 in colonies where emancipation hadn't been enacted yet, and subjected places where it had to central direction on the subject, also an effective reinstatement. Blacks were banned from the army, from entering the country without permission, and from marrying whites. The brief heyday of French equality, nurtured through a century of abolitionist sentiment and advances, lasted for about a decade.

So that, at length, is the social and political background for Thomas-Alexandre Dumas' career. Dumas' father, Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, was the firstborn son and heir to a noble but destitute family in Normandy. After puttering around the military and some noble entourages for a while, Antoine traveled to Saint-Domingue in 1738 to mooch off his younger brother, who had become a successful plantation owner. He remained for ten years, unable to establish himself independently, until he absconded with some slaves into the Haitian forest after some sort of violent incident with his brother. He settled in the more rugged Jeremiah Parish on the Haitian cove, where a more egalitarian mixed-race society had taken hold on the frontier. Here, Thomas-Alexandre was born in 1762, to a slave named Marie-Cessette Dumas that his father had purchased, whose final fate is unknown. According to the laws at the time, a slave mother and mixed-race child were free if the slave-owner father married them, though they were in for a harsh legal time otherwise. This had led to a considerable mixed-race population on the island, even a mulatto cultural elite, staging high-society plays and living as grandly as people in Paris did. An elite in tension, though, with the slave population, until the elite was suppressed in the 1770s or so. Thomas-Alexandre grew up in his mixed-race boomtown until age 12, learning both useful frontier riding and fighting skills as well as "civilized" manners and history from his aristocratic father.

The pair returned to France in 1775, though not without Thomas-Alexandre's temporary sale to finance the trip (Antoine's other mixed-race children had been sold much earlier). Upon arrival, with his younger siblings having since died, Antoine engaged in considerable litigation to gain the right to mismanage his family estate. Thomas-Alexandre, meanwhile, lived the high life in Paris, receiving a classical education and engaging in duels, partying on the town and through high society on his father's (relations') dime. He and other "Americans" were the beneficiary of liberal attitudes among Parisians on race at the time, the last decade of the monarchy, despite the country’s registration laws.

This lasted for most of a decade, until his father remarried and cut Thomas-Alexandre off. He took the path of many sons of aristocracy and went into the military, joining the gritty, hard-working dragoons along with many other members of minor noble families, though he eschewed an officer's rank to join as a private. Having lived under a few different versions of his family name, he picked this final estrangement from his crappy father to enlist as Alexandre Dumas, leaving off the Thomas and using his mother's last name. He would subsequently style himself simply as "Alex Dumas."

Alex Dumas was widely liked in his unit, and was made the subject of dubiously-likely tales of feats of strength. The dragoons worked as skirmishers, shock troops, support for law enforcement, and in other dirty jobs. They were serving on the Belgian frontier in 1789 when the French government submitted to the revolutionaries, still optimistic and moderate (with many noble supporters) at the time. The National Guard was a hotbed of revolutionary activity and egalitarian ideals, and when his unit was ordered by a local national guard commander to garrison the village of Villers-Cotterêts, he eventually came to be engaged to the commander's (white) daughter. His career as an enlisted man proceeded normally for a few years as the revolution was still in its moderate phase, including involvement in skirmishes at the border with the Hapsburg Netherlands, where Dumas distinguished himself through feats of gallantry. Now that the French government had acquired the reformist will to back new military ideas, they were in the process of rapid professionalization and military modernization. By 1792, they were on the offensive on all fronts, and Dumas was recruited to the newly-formed Black Legion of "Americans," similar to other legions of volunteers (though those often were not French citizens, as the Blacks were). In a sort of recruitment war over the well-regarded soldier, units competed for Dumas with offers of higher tank, and the Black Legion made him a Lieutenant Colonel. His involvement with the unit involved continuing foreign skirmishes, as well as activity to put down anti-revolutionary coups, until the Black Legion was disbanded in 1793, and Dumas was appointed a Brigadier General in the Army of the North (all within a year of having been just another dragoon). The King had been guillotined by this point, but the revolution hadn't spiraled into the Terror quite yet.

Things weren't ideal for generals though, as there were purges of commanders who hadn't been successful in the field (or were suspected of other apostasies). This churn led to a lot of opportunity for ambitious young officers to advance, however, from Dumas to a young artillery captain from Corsica named Napoleone Buonaparte. This was the time of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), a small oligarchy of fanatics who would soon bring about the Terror in 1794. On the military front, however, there had been the first nationwide conscription. Even with France's considerable technological advances, many of these new troops were initially armed only with pikes, a symbol of the revolution for their French, anti-aristocratic, and classical character. Dumas was a believer in the Revolution, invoking its ideals of liberty and equality while doing his duty zealously. He didn't often speak of it in terms of his racial identity, but there were some later documents where he spoke of the cause in which he had "a dual interest because of the climate that saw my birth." He was first placed in a command at the Spanish border, then by late 1793 in command of the Army of the Alps, fighting against the Piedmontese-Sardinians and their backers, the Hapsburg Austrians.

Dumas was an active commander, keeping up a rigorous schedule of inspections of his widely-dispersed forces in this extremely rugged Alpine terrain. In the chaotic and increasingly murderous political climate, he was able to stave off political disaster resulting from the animosity of local franchises of the CPS and denunciation as a law enforcer against a Parisian riot during his time as a dragoon (he claimed that he did his best to deescalate the situation). He was able to cultivate a good working relationship with the commissar assigned to keep an eye on him, and held on to command long enough to execute a successful capture of the mountain pass to Italy in spring of 1794 (after the CPS had hurried him to fight in the snowy winter). There is some first-hand coverage of battle reporting, but I wish the book went into slightly more detail on the battle and Dumas' command.

After this victory, Alex was recalled to Paris for ominous reasons, but fortunately for him the Thermidorian Reaction overthrew the CPS and changed the political situation. He was assigned to the Vendée region in Western France to clean up the undisciplined and rampaging army after the conclusion of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign. He did his best to instill respect for the local (monarchist, agrarian) populace and punishment of army rule-breakers, but he only worked here for few months.

In the meantime, the moderate government that succeeded the CPS fought off uprisings from the left and the right for a time, including with the help of the young general now named Napoleon Bonaparte. Its instability led to its replacement by the Directorate, where Napoleon's political patron repaid his usefulness by having him appointed the head of the ragtag, under-supplied Army of Italy. Dumas was assigned to this army, which, after a century of increasing military professionalization, now returned to the model of a looting army living off the land, to Dumas' dismay as he always did his best to maintain good relations with locals. Appointed as a cavalry commander, Dumas was an important part of the Siege of Mantua, the fortress-city gateway to the Italian peninsula. His leadership of his small unit prevented a breakout of Austrian troops from the besieged fortress; but his anger at the perceived overlooking of his contributions burned several bridges with Napoleon's staff officers. He was put in command of another unit while pushing up into Austria, and here saw his most lauded moment of heroism in March of 1797 while skirmishing in Clausen, where he single-handedly held off a small Austrian cavalry unit from taking a crucial bridge until reinforcements could arrive to hold it, saving the French advance. For this, in the Enlightenment-era tradition of classical references, he would be known as “the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol." This time, Napoleon appreciated his heroics, and gave him command of a larger cavalry unit; and after peace was declared with Austria, made him the Governor-General of Treviso in Italy, where he again did his best to ensure respect of the locals and harmonious relations.

Next, Dumas was sent to Toulon in 1798 for a role in a secret mission, which turned out to be the expedition to Egypt (with a liberation of Malta along the way). The country had long held a place in the French imagination as the rich "orient," and this combined with the need for a new breadbasket and agricultural region, and Napoleon's dreams of riding like Alexander into India to liberate it from the British, made it a reasonable target (though one less rich than other options). Nevertheless, things went very poorly, and Napoleon’s Arabic propaganda did not help win over the locals. Dumas served as a cavalry commander in the army, which was under-provisioned and operating in the hottest season of the year. Napoleon's generals spent considerable time grumbling about how poorly things went, news of which got back to Napoleon and incriminated Dumas, among others in his eyes. Despite victories over the Mamelukes, the campaign was not able to establish a hold on the region, and lost its naval support when the British navy sank their ships at the Battle of the Nile. Dispirited, Napoleon returned to France in 1799, and Dumas was not far behind him. However, the shoddy ship that he sailed on was forced to take shelter in a Neapolitan port, where the friendly client republic had recently been replaced by governance by the Holy Faith Army, a reactionary force fighting for reinstatement of the King of Naples.

Dumas was imprisoned in Naples until 1801. He was kept along with another French general in conditions that were in some ways upscale (they were allowed a servant), but mostly trended toward mistreatment. Dumas was very sick for most of his captivity, and in his half-delirious paranoia suspected poisoning (though it may have just been the effect of normal medicine of the time). He ended up with permanent bodily harm from the ordeal, partially blinded and deaf, exacerbating his old combat and dueling wounds. Meanwhile, in the outside world, Napoleon had come to power in a coup in 1799, and by 1800 had turned the collapsing French situation around, and was once again on the march into Italy. In the face of the changing political situation, Dumas' treatment improved, and he was moved to a better fortress-prison, encouraged by almost comically obsequious handling from his jailer. He was freed early in 1801, when Naples surrendered. At last, he was able to return home to his wife.

I decided to present a blow-by-blow instead of a brief summary of Alex Dumas’ military career because it was fairly short, encompassing only the French Revolutionary Wars time period, and did not extend into the more famous Napoleonic era. Dumas did not find much success after his repatriation, as the ire of Napoleon and his high-ranking staff precluded any new military commission, or payments of any sort of pension. It was in these last few years of his life that he had his son Alexandre, who spent time with him until his death in 1806 (when Alexandre was four).

Dumas remembered his father very fondly, and wrote of his life and their time together in a memoir. This has been the source of much of the popularly-known information on Gen. Dumas, though Reiss is conscientious in countering its breathless heroics when other information is available. Additionally, the story of his father's betrayal and imprisonment was a major inspiration for The Count of Monte Cristo, the name of which was also the name of a Haitian island where Dumas' own father conducted some of his trade. He may live forever in the shadow of his son and his major place in the western literary canon, but Alex Dumas was definitely a very interesting and groundbreaking figure, whose life, besides being highly interesting in its own right, also illustrates the frustrating one step forward/two steps back tale of European relations with Black people. It shows that history is not a permanently-liberalizing march toward progress, and that sometimes those espousing ideas of progress and reform, like Napoleon, might sell people out based on race.