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+Title: Project Gutenberg Dumas Commentary
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+Author:  John Bursey
+
+Official Release Date: January, 2002  [Etext #3010]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 06/10/01]
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+The Vicomte de Bragelonne: The End and Beginning of an Era, by John Bursey
+by John Bursey
+<Mordaunt@aol.com>
+
+
+
+
+The Vicomte de Bragelonne is a different sort of novel from the preceding
+volumes in the D'Artagnan Romances.  In The Three Musketeers and Twenty
+Years After, we find our four heroes battling against evil forces with a
+combination of stunning swordplay, unmatched bravado, unbelievable
+ingenuity, and several strokes of great fortune.  Their famous cry, "All
+for one and one for all!" has echoed throughout the imagination for 150
+years.  Movies are still being made from the stories, they still appear in
+television commercials, they have their own candy bar, and some current
+authors have even lent their talents to filling in the gaps between the
+novels.  The swashbuckling exploits of the "four invincibles," as they
+are referred to in the novels, have made them sell consistently for a
+century and a half, a feat not achieved by many authors.  The popularity
+of the stories, first as magazine serials and then as novels, made Dumas
+the most famous Frenchman of the age.  The heroes and villains are
+clearly defined, and it is never difficult for the readers to know who to
+cheer for as the drama unfolds in the theater of the mind.
+
+Dumas himself resembled, as much as one could in the 19th Century, his
+swashbuckling heroes.  Before he embarked on the series, he was already
+considered one of, if not the, greatest dramatists in France.  He had
+fought in one of the many revolutions in France at that time, and would
+later run guns in an Italian revolution.  His unerring sense of drama had
+brought him theatrical acclaim the world over, and when he switched to
+novels, that same sense never steered him wrong.  For the entirety of the
+D'Artagnan Romances, he had a collaborator, named Maquet, who did much of
+the historical research.  But the many charges leveled against Dumas that
+he ran a literature "factory" are blatantly false.  Once he got his
+historical framework, Dumas injected the story with his own energy and
+breathed life into it, many times ignoring the strict dictates of
+historical fact for the necessity of crafting the drama as he saw fit.
+Indeed, The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After bear many structural
+similarities.  There are clear villains (Milady, De Wardes, Richelieu,
+Mordaunt, Mazarin) and clear heroes and heroines, great men destined for
+demise, despite our heroes' efforts (Buckingham, Charles I), and yet our
+four heroes must triumph against all odds, united until the end.
+
+But the clearest difference in this third volume is that our heroes are
+no longer united.  Though inseparable in their youth, now Aramis, with
+the unwitting Porthos in tow, is plotting against the king, who
+D'Artagnan has sworn with his life to defend.  Athos, once the most
+upright defender of nobility, is now forced to break his sword before his
+monarch, and renounce the sacred vow he pledged with his son in Twenty
+Years After to respect royalty in all its forms.  Never, even, do the
+four come face to face in the course of the entire novel.  Time has sent
+them in different directions, and managed to separate them when constant
+villains in the course of forty years have failed.
+
+Dumas uses this division of his heroes to skillfully insert his own
+opinions on that phase of French history, which in many ways paralleled
+the time he lived in himself.  Although Dumas's distinct storytelling
+talents are as evident as in the former novels, Dumas sets the twilight
+of his characters in the dawn of a new age, exploiting the contrast as a
+form of social commentary.  The four former musketeers are now drawn to
+each represent a virtue.  D'Artagnan is Loyalty, Athos is Nobility,
+Porthos is Strength, and Aramis is Cunning.  When Louis XIV dishonors
+Raoul and casts off Athos, he sheds the ideal of Nobility as he in
+reality broke the power of the French nobles and brought the entire
+country under his control.  When he tames D'Artagnan, as Aramis and
+Porthos are fighting for their lives at Belle-Isle, he symbolically gains
+the Loyalty of his servants, which he would keep during his long reign.
+When Porthos meets his demise at Belle-Isle, Strength is no longer a
+virtue prized in France, as Industry (in the form of Colbert) and Cunning
+(in Aramis) now become the hallmarks of the time.  When Fouquet falls, so
+does Generosity.  When Louis takes Louise as his mistress, condemning
+Raoul to his death, Fidelity dies with the poor young cavalier as
+Innocence is corrupted.  As D'Artagnan, Raoul, Athos, and Porthos meet
+their ends, and only Aramis is left alive, Dumas indicates the death of
+these noble virtues in France, virtues that he urged his contemporaries
+to assume again in his own time.
+
+This new generation that comes with the ascension of Louis XIV is,
+indeed, pale in comparison to the times in which the four musketeers had
+their great exploits.  D'Artagnan and Athos are endlessly commenting on
+these youngsters, always unfavorably, and they are generally accurate.
+Raoul, the true son of Athos, and the symbolic son of the four, is never
+as quick to draw his sword as D'Artagnan would have been at that age,
+though he is equally as skillful in its use.  Although he loses his one
+true love, Louise, as D'Artagnan did forty years ago, Constance, this
+loss kills the younger hero.  He is more thoughtful, more sensitive, and
+thereby weaker.  The villains, too, are watered down.  De Wardes,
+certainly the most "evil" character in the novel, pales in comparison
+with the great villains D'Artagnan and his friends had to face.  Colbert,
+though ugly, ill-humored, and set to ruin the kind, generous, affable
+Fouquet, is actually a blessing in disguise, and it is through his "great
+works" that France is ready to rise to ever-greater glory in the coming
+reign.  The Chevalier de Lorraine, always a disruptive influence, is
+checked not through confrontation or daring intrigue, but by artful court
+maneuvering.  De Guiche, Raoul's loyal friend, and as consummate a
+nobleman of the new reign as one might expect to find, is more concerned
+with his love affairs and his own happiness than his role in safeguarding
+Raoul's honor.  Though he does fight De Wardes in the only illegal duel
+in the novel, he loses, and does nothing to help Raoul when the king's
+treachery is discovered.  And age has affected the four heroes, too.
+D'Artagnan pulls off his masterstroke in England not with his four
+friends by his side and sword drawn, as he did in the former novels, but
+with stealth and cunning.  He defeats De Wardes not by a duel, which
+would be his ordinary mode of operation, but by outwitting him.  The only
+scenes that are reminiscent of the times of former glory are the riot at
+the execution, where D'Artagnan, with Raoul by his side, defeats a whole
+mob, and Aramis and Porthos's desperate final stand in the grotto.  But
+even these are tainted; D'Artagnan's action ends up going against the
+values he would have prized, had he known the truth, and the events in
+the grotto cost Porthos his life.
+
+But these differences in the times and the changes in our heroes as they
+age do not detract from the work, but rather enrich it.  It is a more
+mature novel than its predecessors, richer in detail due to the slower
+pacing.  The mood, too, is much darker, especially towards the end, when
+we know that impending doom is approaching for Raoul, as his love affair
+unravels, and for Aramis and Porthos as their plot is detected.  And, of
+course, the mystery of the man in the iron mask, around which the latter
+portions of the book are based, is one of the most dark and sinister
+mysteries in all history.  The characters, though they each defend
+an abstract ideal, are as rich and vivid as they ever were, if not more
+so, and the depth of emotion that Dumas explores is much wider than in
+the two earlier books.  Porthos was modeled on Dumas's own father, and
+legend has it that the author wept for three days as he was writing the
+death of that gentle giant.  Many readers experience the same, no matter
+how many times they may have read that passage.  Even Aramis, according
+to Dumas, was moved to shed his first and only tears.  Anyone who has
+ever loved and lost can feel Raoul's pain, and any parent can understand
+Athos's anguish as he sees his son off to certain death.  No longer are
+characters simply good or simply evil, they are their own entities,
+sometimes good, sometimes evil.  The Duchesse de Chevreuse, once Aramis's
+close friend and contact at court, the mother of Raoul, now schemes
+against Aramis, hoping to bring about his downfall.  Queen Anne of
+Austria, once the beautiful, helpless heroine, is now the ailing,
+sometimes imperial, matriarch of the royal household, tortured by the son
+she was forced to forsake.  In other words, they are human.  The
+refinement of the four principles, as age steals upon them, adds an element
+that is somehow lacking from the former books.  They now hail from
+different spheres, which lends richness to their portrayal.  Aramis is
+the man of God, with a scheme always in the works.  Athos is the
+dignified, retired nobleman, whose only concerns are debts left unpaid
+and the launching of his son into the world.  Porthos is a great baron,
+ever ready to help, ever seeking another title, ever seeking the noble
+airs that were not his birthright, but to which he came upon his wife's
+death.  And D'Artagnan is a hardened soldier, casting a cynical eye
+everywhere, still loyal, but somewhat embittered, trading in his
+customary "mordioux!" for the "bah!" more common to old men.
+
+The character of D'Artagnan is, of course, the focus of the Romances.
+Dumas frequently admitted that D'Artagnan was the man he could never be.
+In The Vicomte de Bragelonne, the character expands even further.
+Although his primary symbolic representation is that of the virtue of
+Loyalty, he is not devoid of other virtues.  He has his share of
+Cunning, Nobility, and Strength, as well as the virtues of the other
+characters.  He's a sort of Everyman, superior in every respect, and the
+only man that can tame him is Louis, the greatest French monarch of them
+all.  The scene in which D'Artagnan goes to the scene of the duel between
+De Wardes and De Guiche, and from the forensic evidence manages to piece
+together the details exactly, predates the classic detective fiction that
+was becoming popular in the States with Edgar Allen Poe's murders in the
+Rue Morgue.  He has learned to maneuver in royal circles with infinite
+grace and delicacy, and until the end he boasts that he can always make
+the king do what he wants.  Even outside the D'Artagnan Romances, he has
+gotten around.  He's found his way onto the big screen countless times,
+most recently in two major films in the 1990s.  He's found his way onto
+the stage, not only in Dumas's own adaptations of the Musketeers saga,
+but as a walk-on character in Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand, for
+example.  Many talented authors, in many different ages, have lent their
+pens to continuations to the saga.  Paul Feval and a M. Lassez wrote a
+series of eight novels based on the adventures of D'Artagnan with a young
+Cyrano de Bergerac.  These are supposedly tales of Grimaud's, Athos's
+servant, related to Athos, and Aramis even makes an appearance.  Roger
+Nimier's last book was D'Artagnan amoureux, set shortly after The Three
+Musketeers.  He had planned more in the series, but unfortunately died in
+1956.  The 1993 winner of le Prix Interallie was a novel entitled Le
+dernier amour d'Aramis by Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, which focuses on Aramis,
+the most mysterious of the four and the one whose past remains the
+greatest mystery.  Although Dumas's portrayal of the character of
+D'Artagnan is the most famous, it was not the first.  Dumas got much of
+his initial material from a book written by a soldier, Courtilz de
+Sandras, who supplemented his income by writing historical fictions.  He
+published his fictional Memoirs of M. d'Artagnan in 1700, and Dumas,
+after reading the first volume, used much of the material as his basis
+for the first part of The Three Musketeers.  The real D'Artagnan,
+although he was Captain-Lieutenant of the musketeers, and he did arrest
+Fouquet and escort him to prison, was far from the dashing hero Dumas
+made him.  As for the other characters, particularly Athos, Porthos, and
+Aramis, they also appeared in this fictional memoir, and lacking even the
+scant details about them that subsequent historians have managed to bring
+to the light of day, Dumas's ever-fertile imagination made them three of
+the most famous men in history.
+
+As a closing, instead of more of my thoughts on the novels, I instead
+quote what Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about The Vicomte de Bragelonne:
+"My acquaintance with the VICOMTE began, somewhat indirectly, in the year
+of grace 1863, when I had the advantage of studying certain illustrated
+dessert plates in a hotel at Nice.  The name of d'Artagnan in the legends
+I already saluted like an old friend, for I had met it the year before in
+a work of Miss Yonge's.  My first perusal was in one of those pirated
+editions that swarmed at that time out of Brussels, and ran to such a
+troop of neat and dwarfish volumes.  I understood but little of the
+merits of the book; my strongest memory is of the execution of d'Eymeric
+and Lyodot - a strange testimony to the dulness of a boy, who could enjoy
+the rough-and-tumble in the Place de Greve, and forget d'Artagnan's
+visits to the two financiers.  My next reading was in winter-time, when I
+lived alone upon the Pentlands.  I would return in the early night from
+one of my patrols with the shepherd; a friendly face would meet me in the
+door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs to fetch my slippers; and I
+would sit down with the VICOMTE for a long, silent, solitary lamp-light
+evening by the fire.  And yet I know not why I call it silent, when it
+was enlivened with such a clatter of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of
+musketry, and such a stir of talk; or why I call those evenings solitary
+in which I gained so many friends.  I would rise from my book and pull
+the blind aside, and see the snow and the glittering hollies chequer a
+Scotch garden, and the winter moonlight brighten the white hills.  Thence
+I would turn again to that crowded and sunny field of life in which it
+was so easy to forget myself, my cares, and my surroundings: a place busy
+as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and
+sounding with delightful speech.  I carried the thread of that epic into
+my slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, I rejoiced to plunge into the book
+again at breakfast, it was with a pang that I must lay it down and turn
+to my own labours; for no part of the world has ever seemed to me so
+charming as these pages, and not even my friends are quite so real,
+perhaps quite so dear, as d'Artagnan.
+
+"Since then I have been going to and fro at very brief intervals in my
+favourite book; and I have now just risen from my last (let me call it my
+fifth) perusal, having liked it better and admired it more seriously than
+ever.  Perhaps I have a sense of ownership, being so well known in these
+six volumes.  Perhaps I think that d'Artagnan delights to have me read of
+him, and Louis Quatorze is gratified, and Fouquet throws me a look, and
+Aramis, although he knows I do not love him, yet plays to me with his
+best graces, as to an old patron of the show.  Perhaps, if I am not
+careful, something may befall me like what befell George IV. about the
+battle of Waterloo, and I may come to fancy the VICOMTE one of the first,
+and Heaven knows the best, of my own works. "
+
+So many readers have thought the same over the last century and a half,
+and many more will in the times to come.  Like Dumas itself, the work has
+many flaws.  There are errors in history, chronology, and in some places
+Dumas even writes the wrong year or gets confused about a character's
+age.  Dumas always cared more about the drama, the suspense, the history
+he was creating, rather than the sometimes boring facts of actual
+history.  He took his historical sketch and filled it out from his own
+imagination, creating characters whose actions changed history within the
+novels, and who have enlivened history ever since.
+
+***
+
+There has been much confusion over the years as to which books form the
+"Musketeers Series" or the D'Artagnan Romances, as they are referred to
+by scholars.  The greatest confusion lies in the manner in which editors
+split the lengthy third volume of the series.  The title of the whole
+work is The Vicomte de Bragelonne, however, its subtitle is Ten Years
+Later, and so some older editions use that as the title.  Also, the novel
+is split into three, four, or five volumes, depending on the edition.
+When split into three volumes, the titles are: The Vicomte de Bragelonne,
+Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask.  In four volumes the
+titles are: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la
+Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask.  The copies of The Man in the
+Iron Mask that are sold in bookstores today correspond to the last volume
+of the four-volume edition.  The five-volume editions rarely give
+separate titles to the volumes.  Also adding to the confusion is the
+fact that Dumas considered The Three Musketeers to be two books: The
+Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.  The split occurs, naturally,
+shortly after D'Artagnan is made a musketeer.  Some older editions split
+this book in this fashion.  Also, there are two other books that feature
+the characters of the D'Artagnan Romances that are, however, falsely
+attributed to Dumas.  These two titles are D'Artagnan and the King-Maker
+and The Son of Porthos.  Not only do these novels outright contradict
+the earlier books in the series, but they were clearly not written by
+Alexandre Dumas.  Many catalogues, however, list them among Dumas's
+works.  Most commonly, though, the entire D'Artagnan Romances are
+found in five books, with The Vicomte de Bragelonne being split into
+three volumes.  Here is a listing of them in chronological order, with
+possible subdivisions listed in parenthesis:
+
+The Three Musketeers - serialized 1844
+(The Four Musketeers)
+Twenty Years After - serialized 1845
+The Vicomte de Bragelonne - serialized 1847-1850
+(Ten Years Later)
+Louise de la Valliere
+The Man in the Iron Mask
+
+For the purposes of the Project Gutenberg etexts, The Vicomte de
+Bragelonne was split into four texts, using the same divisions as the
+four-volume editions.  However, another text exists, entitled Ten Years
+Later, which was published by Project Gutenberg before Twenty Years
+After, even though it occurs later in the story.  While it is correct in
+claiming that it is a sequel to The Three Musketeers, it neglects to
+acknowledge that Twenty Years After comes between The Three Musketeers
+and that etext.  This etext also, like some novel editions, uses the
+title Ten Years Later to refer to The Vicomte de Bragelonne as a whole,
+and it covers portions of the etexts The Vicomte de Bragelonne and the
+newer Ten Years Later.
+
+***
+
+What follows are some short biographical details about the real
+personages behind the characters created by Dumas.  Although some of them
+do not appear in The Vicomte de Bragelonne, they are referred to
+frequently, and so they were included.
+
+Anne of Austria: (1601-66) Anne was the daughter of Phillip III of
+Spain.  She married Louis XIII in 1615, and after his death, ruled as
+Regent from 1643-61 with Mazarin as her prime minister.  Modern
+historians reckon that she was almost certainly Mazarin's lover, but no
+evidence beyond rumor exists of a secret marriage between the two, as
+Dumas suggests.  She died of breast cancer in 1666, though symptoms of
+her disease did not appear until 1664.  She was supposedly in love with
+the elder Buckingham in around 1646, but nothing suggests that she was
+actually his mistress, though many thought so.  She was, though, in her
+youth, one of the greatest beauties of all Europe.
+
+Aramis:  Aramis's real name was Henri d'Aramitz.  Like his fictional
+counterpart, he was a clergyman, a Bernais, and like D'Artagnan, he was a
+Gascon.  He joined the musketeers in 1640, married in 1654, had four
+children, and died around 1674.  He was a nephew to M. de Treville,
+captain of the musketeers from 1634-1642.  He was never, so far as
+history can tell, involved with the Jesuits.  A German named Nickel
+was Vicar-General from 1652-1664 and from 1664-1681 an Italian named
+Jean-Paul Oliva headed the order.
+
+Athos: Athos was, in real life, Armand de Sillegue d'Athos d'Auteville.
+He was born around 1615, joined the musketeers at the age of twenty-five,
+and died in Paris in 1643.  He was probably a nobleman, as Athos was, and
+was a Gascon, as D'Artagnan was, and was also a cousin to M. de Treville,
+captain of the musketeers from 1634-1642.  Dumas claimed, in the preface
+to The Three Musketeers, to be nothing more than the editor of the
+memoirs of the Comte de la Fere, presumably the same memoirs Athos is
+seen working on during the course of The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
+
+Baisemeaux: (1613?-97) Francois de Montlezun joined the musketeers in
+1634 where he served with our four heroes' historical counterparts.  He
+purchased the post of governor of the Bastile in 1658 for forty thousand
+livres, not one hundred and fifty thousand as Dumas claims, and held the
+post until his death.  He left a fortune of two million livres.
+
+Beaufort: (1616-69) Francois de Vendome, the Duc de Beaufort, was a
+grandson of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrees.  He was jailed in
+Vincennes in 1643 for plotting against Mazarin, and he escaped in 1648
+(with the aid of Athos and Grimaud according to Twenty Years After).
+After fighting against the king in the Fronde, he reconciled with the
+throne in 1653.  He died at the siege of Candia.
+
+Belliere: (1608-1705) Suzanne de Bruc, Marquis de Plessis-Belliere, called
+Elise by Dumas, was widowed in 1654.  She was very close to Fouquet, and
+it was she who organized his social engagements, not Madame Fouquet.
+When Fouquet was arrested in 1661, she was kept under house arrest until
+1665.
+
+Bragelonne: Dumas's source for the character Raoul de Bragelonne comes
+from a slight mention of a suitor of Louise de Valliere's while she was
+still at Blois.  The most likely candidate is Jean de Bragelonne, who
+was an obscure councilor at the parliament at Rennes.  However, there
+were several other Bragelonnes who were also in the area: Jerome, his son
+Francois, both soldiers, and Jacques, Gaston d'Orleans's chief steward.
+Jean was more than likely related to one of these other Bragelonnes, but
+historians are not certain as to which.
+
+Buckingham: (1627-87) George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, was
+the son of the George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who figured so
+prominently in The Three Musketeers, and Katherine Manners, then the
+richest heiress in England.  After his father's assassination, he was
+raised alongside the children of Charles I.  He was one of the rakes of
+Charles II's court - hot-tempered, unpredictable, and bisexual.  Though
+he had great influence over the king, his disputes with the monarch
+landed him in the Tower on four separate occasions.  His love for
+Henrietta-Anne Stuart was well-attested, and often drove him to
+extremities of behavior.
+
+Charles II: (1630-85) Charles Stuart fled to France in 1646, returned
+briefly to Scotland in 1651, where he was crowned, was routed by Cromwell
+in September, and returned to France until Mazarin signed a treaty with
+Cromwell in 1655 declaring the deposed monarch persona non grata in
+France.  With Monk's support, he finally returned to London as a king in
+1661.  During his reign there were two wars with the Dutch, the great
+plague occurred, the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, and the Great Fire
+swept London.  The visit to Mazarin depicted at the beginning of The
+Vicomte de Bragelonne has its basis in an actual visit paid by the
+deposed monarch to the Cardinal in Spain in 1659.  It was only one of
+many attempts to gain French support.
+
+Chevreuse: (1600-79) Marie-Aime de Rohan Bazon married the Duc de
+Chevreuse in 1622.  She was a close friend of Anne of Austria, and used
+many lovers in her plots against Richelieu.  Although regularly exiled by
+Louis XIII, she constantly snuck back to court.  She was imprisoned in
+1628, escaped in 1637, and fled to Spain, and then England, where she was
+again briefly imprisoned on the Isle of Wight.  She moved to Belgium, and
+was allowed to return to France by Mazarin in 1643.  She was quickly
+exiled again, but allowed to return under the Amnesty of Reuil in 1649.
+She continued her intrigues during the Fronde and was named as Raoul de
+Bragelonne's mother in Twenty Years After.
+
+Colbert: (1619-83) Jean-Baptiste Colbert was born in Reins, the son of a
+minor official and an agent of Richelieu's.  He was employed first by the
+Secretary of State for War, in 1640, and later became Mazarin's intendant
+in 1655.  He purchased a barony in 1658 and entered the aristocracy.
+Mazarin's words on his deathbed, recommending Colbert to Louis XIV were
+portrayed by Dumas with accuracy.  Mazarin actually said, "I owe you
+everything, but I pay my debt to your majesty in giving you Colbert."  He
+became Louis's chief minister in 1661 and immediately began administering
+the reforms necessary after Fouquet's regime.  In a decade, he
+effectively tripled the revenues.  Although he did not personally care
+for him, Dumas's estimation of Colbert's "glorious works" and projects
+was fairly accurate - in addition to his building projects he also
+supported many French industries and sent explorers and colonists to
+America.  Although he built the French navy, he eventually became opposed
+to the wars of Louis XIV, as they thwarted his efforts to keep the budget
+balanced.
+
+Conde: (1621-86) Louis de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, became Prince de Conde
+in 1646, on the death of his father.  During the 1640s he distinguished
+himself in several battles and gained a name for his military skills.  He
+believed, however, that he had not been rewarded sufficiently, and
+alienated both the queen and Mazarin to the extent that he was jailed for
+a year in 1650.  In retaliation he raised an army to take the king away
+from his advisors, failed, and left France in 1653.  He continued to
+fight in every campaign against France until his rehabilitation in 1659,
+after which he retired to his estates.  He returned to service in 1668
+and died in battle in 1674.
+
+D'Artagnan: Charles de Batz-Castlemore, sieur d'Artagnan, was born in
+Tarbes around 1615.  He joined Richelieu's Guards in 1635 and then the
+musketeers in 1644.  During the years 1646-1657, when the musketeers
+were disbanded in actual history, Mazarin used him as a courier.  He was
+appointed second-in-command to the absentee Captain-Lieutenant of the
+musketeers (a nephew of Mazarin's who had no interest in the work) in
+1657, when the company was reformed.  Although he only held the rank of
+Lieutenant, he was the actual commander of the troops.  He married in
+1659, had two sons, and separated from his wife in 1665.  It was indeed
+the real D'Artagnan who, in 1661, arrested Fouquet, though not nearly as
+dramatically as Dumas's depiction, and escorted him first to Angers, and
+later, after the former minister's trial, to Pignerol.  He became Captain-
+Lieutenant of the musketeers in 1667, in other words, the commander of
+the musketeers, as the rank of Captain-General was reserved for the king
+himself.  During Louis's invasion of the Dutch Republic, he was briefly
+governor of Lille in 1672.  He was killed at the siege of Maastricht in
+March of 1673.  From his few surviving documents, he appears to have been
+rather an unimaginative soldier with a great respect for authority.  He
+never lost his Gascon accent, which is detectable even in his letters.
+His spelling was atrocious even by the standards of the time.  Dumas
+bases his character largely on his own imagination and from another
+fictional work from 1700 entitled The Memoirs of M. d'Artagnan by
+Courtilz de Sandras, from which he got the basis for the first few
+chapters of The Three Musketeers.  Dumas never, however, read beyond the
+first volume of Sandras's work, and vastly altered the material he did
+read, making it uniquely his own.  The character of Milady also comes
+from Sandras's writings, wherein D'Artagnan encounters a mysterious
+English noblewoman known only as Miledi.
+
+Fouquet: (1615-80) Raised to power by Mazarin, Nicholas Fouquet was far
+from the brilliant administrator portrayed by Dumas.  He built a vast
+fortune through blatant abuses of power during his tenure as
+superintendent of France's finances, and generally dispersed that fortune
+in the construction of his mansion at Vaux and in his role as a famous
+patron of the arts.  His generous style of management won him admiration,
+but the members of the court generally resented his obvious corruption.
+Louis XIV had Fouquet arrested in 1661, more probably from fear of his
+influence rather than jealousy, though Fouquet did possibly take some
+liberties with the king's mistress during a royal visit.  Belle-Isle was
+never given to the king; Louis sent a garrison to occupy it after
+Fouquet had been arrested.  Fouquet sold his post of procureur-general to
+Louis for 1.4 million livres, not Vanel.  The real D'Artagnan, Charles de
+Batz-Castlemore, arrested him in September and escorted him to Pignerol
+after his three-year trial.  Dumas largely altered the character of
+Fouquet from his historical counterpart, turning him into a Romantic
+cavalier who had all the qualities Dumas himself admired, and making him
+a foil for the somewhat lackluster Colbert.
+
+Guiche: (1637-73) Armand de Gramont, Comte de Guiche, was a soldier,
+adventurer, and a bisexual.  He was part of the entourage of the
+homosexual Philippe d'Orleans, where many reckoned him the handsomest
+man at court.  He was known for being vain, overbearing, and somewhat
+contemptuous, but many lovers of both genders often overlooked these
+flaws.  It is generally accepted that he became the lover of Henrietta
+d'Orleans, but for a time he also paid court to Louise de la Valliere.
+Guiche was, however, not sufficiently enamored with Louise to challenge
+the king's affections, and, according to Madame de La Fayette (whose
+memoirs were one of Dumas's major sources), he "gave her up and even
+quarreled with her, using her very rudely."  He was exiled in 1662 for
+attempting to come between Louis and Louise.  He then fought against
+the Turks in Poland, against the English for the Dutch, and eventually
+returned to France in 1669.  He returned to court in 1671.
+
+Gourville: (1625-1703) Jean Herault de Gourville participated in the
+Fronde before coming to work for Fouquet.  After Fouquet's arrest he was
+sentenced to death, but he escaped to Brussels, where he lived by less
+than honest means.
+
+Henrietta: (1644-1670) Henrietta-Anne Stuart, daughter of Charles I and
+Henrietta-Maria (Henriette in the text), was left behind at Exeter when
+her mother fled to France, but her governess smuggled her to France in
+1646, where she was raised Catholic.  The "privations" which she
+supposedly endured in France were greatly exaggerated by Dumas.  With a
+reputation for cleverness and beauty, she was married to Philippe
+d'Orleans in 1661.  Shortly afterwards, the obvious attentions of both
+Buckingham and De Guiche did indeed arouse her husband's jealousy,
+leading to both Buckingham and De Guiche being persuaded to leave the
+court.  Their marriage, due to Philippe's homosexuality and excessive
+jealousy, was far short of successful.  Before the king took La Valliere
+as his mistress, he was quite captivated by Henrietta, and it wasn't
+until the monarch's attentions shifted to La Valliere that she became
+receptive to De Guiche's advances.  In 1670 she was sent to England to
+persuade Charles II to sign the Treaty of Dover, which he did, and was
+poisoned to death on her return.
+
+Lambert: (1619-83) John Lambert, though trained as a lawyer, turned out
+to be one of the greatest soldiers of the English Civil War.  He played a
+large roll in installing Cromwell as Lord Protector, but later turned
+against him.  He led disgruntled soldiers against Richard Cromwell, and
+in October 1659 he dismissed the "Rump" Parliament, effectively taking
+control of the country himself.  Monk defeated him in 1661 and he was
+sent to the Tower in 1662.  He was later banished to Guernsey, where he
+lived out his life in confinement.
+
+Laporte: (1603-80) Pierre de la Porte entered the queen's service in
+1621.  He helped her carry on correspondence with the Spanish court and
+was imprisoned for "treason" in 1637.  When Anne of Austria assumed the
+Regency in 1643 he was returned to favor.  He became Louis XIV's valet de
+chambre in 1645.  His memoirs were one of Dumas's major sources of
+historical research.
+
+La Valliere: (1644-1710) Francoise-Louise de la Baume le Blanc, later the
+Duchesse de la Valliere, was born near Amboise and became part of the
+entourage of the Duchesse d'Orleans at Blois.  There it was rumored that
+a young man, later identified as Jean de Bragelonne, was in love with
+her.  The affair did not progress far, but Dumas used it as his basis for
+the character of Raoul de Bragelonne.  After the death of Gaston
+d'Orleans, she moved to Paris, where the Duchesse de Choisy proposed her
+as lady of honor to the new Madame (Henrietta).  Soon afterwards the king
+took an interest in her, and she was his mistress from 1661-67.  They had
+four children together.  She was not considered terribly beautiful - she
+was slim, tall, and had blue eyes and bad teeth.  She limped slightly,
+due to a badly set broken leg, but was reported to dance well.  In 1670,
+after Madame de Montespan had replaced her, she retired from court life.
+She took the veil in 1674.  The Oxford World's Classics edition of Louise
+de la Valliere, 1998, has her portrait on the cover.  Many of the
+episodes between Louise and Louis, though perhaps chronologically
+displaced or condensed, were portrayed very accurately by Dumas,
+including the flight to the convent, the decision of the king and Madame
+to pretend that he was in love with her, and the king riding beside her
+carriage during the promenades.
+
+Lorraine: (1643-1702) Philippe de Lorraine was called the Chevalier de
+Lorraine because he once intended to join the Order of Malta.  He was the
+favorite of Philippe d'Orleans for many years, and he received military
+and ecclesiastical preference as a result.  Like Philippe, he, too, was
+homosexual.  He was heir to the Duchy of Lorraine, but stripped of his
+title in 1662.  He protested, and was ordered to leave France.  He
+assumed the title of Duke in 1675, and was recognized by every other
+European nation besides France.
+
+Louis XIV: (1638-1715) Louis de Bourbon, "The Sun King," assumed the
+throne in 1643 after the death of Louis XIII.  Anne of Austria ruled
+during his infancy, with Gaston d'Orleans as her Lieutenant-Governor
+and Mazarin as her first minister.  Mazarin managed to not only preserve
+the monarchy through the Fronde, but also strengthen it considerably.
+Upon Mazarin's death in March, 1661, Louis determined to rule
+personally.  With Colbert's assistance, he removed the corrupt Fouquet
+and declared himself the Sun King the following year.  His rule of 72
+years was the longest of any European monarch.  Later in his reign, his
+wars threatened to bankrupt the state, as well as his legendary excesses,
+such as the great palace at Versailles.  He is famous for the quote,  "Je
+suis l'etat," meaning, "I am the State."
+
+Madame: The title customarily given to the wife of the king's brother.
+Until 1660 it was given to Gaston d'Orleans's wife, Marguerite.  After
+Gaston's death, it fell to Henrietta of England, and Marguerite was
+referred to as the "Dowager Madame."  See also "Monsieur."
+
+Malicorne: (1626-94) Germain Texier was the Baron de Malicorne.  Although
+Dumas portrays him as the son of a syndic, he was in fact a squire of the
+Duc de Guise by 1648.  He was also the lover of Mademoiselle de Pons.  He
+married, in 1665, not Montalais, but a daughter from the first marriage of
+Saint-Remy, Louise de la Valliere's step-father.
+
+Mancini: (1640-1715) Marie de Mancini captured the young Louis XIV's
+heart in 1658, but he was forced to abandon her in favor of a political
+marriage to the Spanish Infanta Maria-Theresa.  Her sister, Olympe
+(1639-1708), later became one of Louis's mistresses.  Dumas misplaces the
+chronology slightly; Mazarin's nieces were removed from court in 1659.
+The meeting between Louis and Marie portrayed by Dumas was an
+amalgamation of two meetings, both of which occurred in 1659.
+
+Manicamp: (1628?-1708) Louis de Madallan de Lesparre was the Seigneur of
+Manicamp, and later the Comte de Manicamp.  He was a soldier, who fought
+with Conde at Lens, and a few other battles.  He lost an arm at Charenton
+in 1652.  Dumas took the name for one of his characters, but preserved
+nothing else.
+
+Maria-Theresa: (1638-83) Maria-Theresa of Austria was the daughter of
+Philip IV of Spain.  She married Louis XIV on June 6, 1660, to promote a
+French-Spanish alliance wrought by Mazarin.  The king's constant
+infidelities caused her a great deal of anguish, as she was truly in love
+with Louis XIV.  In real life she was quite pious and preferred to devote
+most of her life to good works.  Dumas found her quite boring, and
+relegates her to a minor character.
+
+Mazarin: (1602-61) Jules Mazarin was a diplomat in the service of the
+Pope when he was sent to negotiate with Richelieu in 1630.  He became
+Richelieu's protege, and was naturalized French in 1639.  In 1641
+Richelieu had him named a cardinal as well as his own successor.  It is
+generally accepted that he became Anne of Austria's lover, though not, as
+Dumas suggests, her secret husband.  He was not, actually, an ordained
+priest.  He raised taxes, aroused the jealousy of the nobles, and was
+an Italian - all of which made him extremely unpopular with nearly every
+class of the French people.  Most considered him to be extremely self-
+serving and quite greedy.  His private fortune is estimated at between
+13 and 40 million livres.  His diplomatic skills, however, were
+considerable.  Abroad he furthered French interests in southern Germany
+by ending the Thirty Years War in 1648 and allied France with Cromwell
+in 1654.  At home he maneuvered the monarchy through the Fronde, leaving
+it stronger as a result.  The priest who attended him on his deathbed
+insisted that he died in the true faith, though he was reckoned during
+his life more of a philosopher than a Christian.
+
+Michon, Marie: The pseudonym of the Duchesse de Chevreuse in The Three
+Musketeers.
+
+Monk: (1608-70) George Monk was a career soldier who served under
+Cromwell and, as a reward, was made governor of Scotland in 1654.  In
+1659, as disorder in England was rising steadily, he decided to step
+into the fray, and marched south in January, 1661, with 6,000 men.  He
+arrived in London five weeks later, unopposed, but without revealing his
+motives.  His decision to reinstate the Stuarts was probably influenced
+by popular opinion, though his true motives still baffle historians, and
+he met the returning King Charles II at Dover on May 23, 1661.  Charles
+made him the Duke of Albermarle and gave him the highest offices in the
+state.  Monk then retired to private life, but served as a naval
+commander in later wars with the Dutch.
+
+Monsieur: The court title of the king's brother.  Gaston d'Orleans held
+it until his death in 1660.  The title fell to Philip d'Anjou, who also
+assumed the title of Duc d'Orleans.
+
+Montalais: Nicole-Anne-Constance de Montalais, called Aure by Dumas,
+was, like La Valliere, a maid of honor at the court of Gaston d'Orleans.
+In 1661 she entered the service of Henrietta d'Orleans, and shared an
+apartment with La Valliere.  She became La Valliere's confidante, and
+used the information thus garnered to her own ends.  She was known as a
+notorious schemer, and the historical record does indicate that she was
+in love, at least for a time, with a man named Malicorne.
+
+Montespan: (1641-1707) Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart
+was born at the Chateau de Tonnay-Charente.  She was a maid of honor at
+the marriage of Philip d'Orleans and Henrietta Stuart in March, 1661.  In
+1663 she married the Duc de Montespan et d'Antin, and replaced La
+Valliere as the king's mistress in 1667.
+
+Orleans, Gaston d': (1608-60) Gaston-Jean-Baptiste de France, Duc
+d'Orleans, was the younger brother of Louis XIII.  He regularly plotted
+against Richelieu, thereby indirectly against his brother, the king.  He
+became Lieutenant-Governor of the Kingdom when Anne of Austria assumed
+the Regency in 1643.  He supported Anne during the first Fronde, but
+turned against her in the second, for which he was exiled to Blois in
+1652.  He reconciled with the court in 1659.  Aramis judged him as a man
+"void of courage and honesty," a view shared by his contemporaries.  The
+Cardinal de Retz said of him that he had "everything a gentleman should
+have, except courage."  His presence in the novel is entirely fictional;
+he died in February, 1660.
+
+Orleans, Philippe d': (1640-71) Philippe, called Philip by Dumas, was
+the second son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and Louis XIV's younger
+brother.  He was Duc d'Anjou until 1660 when his uncle, Gaston d'Orleans
+died, leaving the title of Duc d'Orleans and the court title of
+"Monsieur" to him.  He married Henrietta Stuart of England in 1661, but
+his homosexuality and jealousy ensured that the marriage was less than
+ideal, to say the least.
+
+Pellisson: (1640-1701) Paul Pellisson (called Pelisson by Dumas) was part
+of Fouquet's literary circle and a member of the French Academy.
+Disfigured by smallpox in his youth, his ugliness brought him a sort of
+fame.  After Fouquet's arrest, Pellisson wrote quite spiritedly in the
+defense of the former Superintendent of Finances.  He was rewarded for
+his loyalty with five years in the Bastile.  He subsequently regained the
+royal favor, and became the Historiographer Royal.
+
+Richelieu: (1585-1642) Although he does not appear in The Vicomte de
+Bragelonne, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, is mentioned
+several times.  He was an admirer of Machiavelli and, under the reign of
+Louis XIII, he became the most powerful man in France.  He greatly
+strengthened France both at home and abroad, and named Mazarin as his
+successor shortly before his death.  In The Three Musketeers, it is he
+who lays the snare for Anne of Austria involving the famous diamond
+studs given to the Duke of Buckingham.  D'Artagnan and his three friends
+rescue the queen from this embarrassing predicament.
+
+Saint-Aignan: (1610-87) Francois de Beauvillier, the Comte de Saint-
+Aignan, was a former governor of the Touraine.  He finally realized his
+ambition, mentioned by Dumas, of joining the French Academy in 1663.
+Before becoming First Gentleman to the King's Bedchamber, he was part of
+Gaston d'Orleans's military household.  Though quite a few years Louis
+XIV's senior, he became the young king's chief purveyor of pleasures.
+
+Saint-Remy: Francoise le Prevot de la Coutelaye became Madame de Saint-
+Remy following her third marriage.  Her first was to a man named Besnard,
+a councilor of the Parliament at Rennes.  Her second marriage was to
+Laurent de la Baume le Blanc, lord of the manor of La Valliere.  He was
+Louise de la Valliere's father.  Laurent died in 1651, and in 1655 she
+married Jacques Couravel, Marquis de Saint-Remy, First Chamberlain to
+Gaston d'Orleans.  After Gaston's death, they both moved to Paris.
+
+Treville: (1598-1672) Arnaud-Jean du Peyrer, Comte de Troisvilles
+(written and pronounced Treville) does not appear in The Vicomte de
+Bragelonne, but he was D'Artagnan's (both the real and fictional)
+predecessor as Captain of the Musketeers.  He was a career soldier and,
+like D'Artagnan, a Gascon.  He was appointed Captain-Lieutenant of the
+Musketeers in 1634 (the rank of Captain-General was reserved for the
+king), and was exiled in 1642 for opposing Richelieu.  Mazarin disbanded
+the musketeers in 1646 (an historical fact ignored by Dumas), and
+Treville retired to Foix as its governor.  In The Three Musketeers (which
+adds about 10 years to the ages of the historical counterparts), it was
+in Treville's office that the first meeting between D'Artagnan, Athos,
+Porthos, and Aramis occurred.
+
+Vanel: (1644-1703) Anne-Marguerite Vanel was the daughter of Claude Vanel
+(a magistrate in the Paris Parliament) and became the wife of Jean
+Coiffer (a member of the Royal Audit Office) in 1654.  Contemporaries
+described her as a "dainty and extremely pretty young woman with a lively
+and very witty turn of mind."  She was Fouquet's mistress during the
+1650s, and later transferred her affections to Colbert.  Her high spirits
+annoyed Colbert, and he passed her off to his brother.
+
+Wardes: (1620-88) Francois-Rene Crespin du Bec was the Marquis de Vardes,
+and a noted schemer and bold liar.  Some women, though, including Madame
+de Motteville, found him charming.  Dumas creates two characters out of
+the historical De Vardes.  The father plays a prominent part in The Three
+Musketeers and Twenty Years After, and the son in The Vicomte de
+Bragelonne, though they were, in reality, the same man.  He was named
+Governor of Aigues-Mortes in 1660 and was banished there a few years
+later following a court scandal.  Although a favorite of Louis XIV, he
+got entangled in a plot by Olympe Mancini (then the Comtesse de Soissons)
+to avenge her sister, Marie, whom the king had abandoned in favor of his
+political marriage to Maria-Theresa of Spain.  He remained in Aigues-
+Mortes for 17 years.
+
+Much of the information for these biographies was taken from the David
+Coward's editions of the D'Artagnan Romances, published by Oxford World's
+Classics.  Additional material came from the Fireblade Coffeehouse's web
+page on Alexandre Dumas at www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Dumas/.  The
+quote from Robert Louis Stevenson comes from his A Gossip on a Novel of
+Dumas's from Memories and Portraits.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg Dumas Commentary, by John Bursey
+
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