Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (106 page)

17
(p. 110)
“in the garden at Amiens, into which Monsieur Putange ... introduced me”:
In a celebrated encounter in a garden in the city of Amiens, Queen Anne of Austria (wife of French king Louis XIII) and the Duke of Buckingham became separated from their party during an evening walk. Taking advantage of the situation, the Duke spoke passionately of love to the Queen, and attempted to hold and caress her. Monsieur de Putange, the Queen’s royal squire, intervened and led the Duke away. This incident provoked a scandal in France and England, and increased Louis’s distrust of Anne. Following this event, the King banished Madame de Vernet, a member of the Queen’s household, as well as Putange; he also exiled Madame de Chevreuse, the Queen’s friend, in whose house she had had another meeting with the Duke of Buckingham, to her properties in the Poitou (Dumas has her banished to la Touraine; see also page 148).

18
(p. 148)
this expedition to Ré:
The He de Ré is an island off the Atlantic coast of France, near the mainland port of La Rochelle. In 1627 the Duke of Buckingham organized an invasion force to come to the relief of French Protestants, known as Huguenots, who had taken refuge in La Rochelle and come under attack by the armies of Louis XIII. The Duke and his army were forced to withdraw after four months. One hypothesis suggests that the Duke undertook this ill-fated invasion for the love of Queen Anne rather than to assist the Huguenots.

19
(p. 153) Rue des Fossoyeurs, No.
14:
According to Dumas biographer and scholar Claude Schopp, street numbers were not affixed to houses before 1775; this anachronism is one of the few errors Dumas makes regarding Parisian topography or geography. In his critical edition of Les
Trois mousquetaires,
Schopp lists the address as number 11.

20
(p. 171)
Men of the Robe and Men of the Sword:
In the Ancien Regime there were two major categories of nobility. The most prestigious and ancient was the nobility of the sword, who were descended from great warriors. Characters in the The Three
Musketeers
who were members of this class include the Duc de la Trémouille and Madame de Chevreuse. Men and women of the robe were recently ennobled parliamentarians and their families or other high-placed commoners.

21
(p. 299)
“There is a proposition almost like it in the
Augustinius
of the heresiarch jansenius, whose book will sooner or later be burned by the hands of the executioner”:
Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), a Flemish theologian whose Latinized name is Jansenius, was the father of the Jansenist movement, which called for religious revival and renewal within the Catholic Church. The Jansenists came into direct conflict with the Jesuits on theological grounds; they believed that Catholics received the gift of grace from God without regard to their actions, while the Jesuits insisted that believers had to earn the grace of God. The Jansenist movement was at its inception in 1625, the time of the action in
The Three Musketeers;
the
Augustinius
that Dumas mentions is Jansenius’s controversial treatise on the teachings of Saint Augustine, published posthumously in 1640. The Inquisition condemned the Augustinius in 1641, and Pope Urban VII condemned it in 1642. At the time, the King could condemn a book and order copies to be seized and publicly burned by the executioner, who normally beheaded or hanged condemned criminals.

22
(p. 299)
“the insinuations of the Pelagians and the demi-Pelagians”:
These are references to a monk named Pelagius (c.360-c.422), who denied the existence of original sin and affirmed man’s free will. These teachings contradicted those of Saint Augustine, and several church councils held between 411 and 431 declared Pelagius a heretic.

23
(p. 326) “A fleur-de-lis....
She was branded!”:
The fleur-de-lis (literally, the lily flower) is the symbol of the French monarchy. Branding with a fleur-de-lis on the shoulder was the punishment for prostitutes as well as for other criminals, including violators of canon law.

24
(p. 343)
Equipments:
Soldiers, especially those in regiments like the Musketeers, were expected to provide their own military equipment. The process of outfitting for a military campaign included procuring everything from horse and saddle to money for rations. Only the lowliest foot soldier received his equipment and rations from his commander, and both were generally inadequate and of poor quality.

25
(p. 446)
The Siege of La Rochelle.
The Edict of Nantes, signed by King Henri IV in 1598, gave French protestants (known as Huguenots) several safe havens, including the city of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, in which to practice their Calvinist version of Christianity. However, Huguenots continued to be persecuted in France, and in 1627 the armies of King Louis XIII tried to take La Rochelle. The Duke of Buckingham led an English expedition to come to the assistance of the city, but his troops met stiff resistance from the French. Under Cardinal Richelieu, the French used a system of earthwork defenses to cut the city off from the ocean, stopping all maritime traffic and denying the English access. The long siege deprived the citizens of all supplies, including food, and after months of starvation La Rochelle capitulated in October 1628.

26
(p. 447)
Bassompierre.
François de Bassompierre (1579-1646), a soldier and diplomat, was named field marshal of France in 1622. He and two other noblemen disputed the leadership role at the Siege of La Rochelle. The others who argued over precedence were the Duc d’Angoulême and the Comte de Schomberg, who had been named field marshal of the French armies in 1625. Because the situation was so ambiguous and because the arguments over precedence and command were sapping the armies arrayed against La Rochelle, King Louis XIII appointed Cardinal Richelieu as supreme commander of this siege. Each nobleman commanded his own men, whom he outfitted and paid for; each or all could have gone home if he or they felt ill treated. Thus the King had to give plums to each to keep them in the war. The King could command their obedience but not their diligence, and he had no authority over their purses.

27
(p. 447)
the preface to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes:
Promulgated by King Henri IV to bring an end to the religious wars that had devastated parts of France during the sixteenth century, the Edict of Nantes guaranteed French Protestants (Huguenots) equal justice, the freedom to practice their faith, and several safe havens throughout the country. Dumas’s reference here prefigures the revocation of this edict in 1685 by Louis XIV, which led to a return to the brutal repression and forced conversions of Huguenots. Many fled to Germany, Holland, and the New World.

28
(p. 546)
would resemble too closely, in 1628, the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572:
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day was provoked by Catherine de Médicis, the mother of King Charles IX, and the Duke of Guise, a Roman Catholic; the massacre was an attempt to thwart the power of French Protestants, known as Huguenots. In Paris alone more than 3,000 French Protestants were killed by Catholic fanatics and the general populace on August 23 and 24, 1572, and the bloodshed extended to the provinces, where killings continued into October.

29
(p. 547) Louis
XI:
King of France from 1461 to 1483, Louis XI ruthlessly advanced royal authority by undermining the feudal system. He appropriated a number of provinces and dukedoms that had been independent domains, including Burgundy, Picardy, Anjou, and Provence, and began a process of consolidation that Cardinal Richelieu would greatly advance under Louis XIII. The absolutist monarchy reached its apogee under Louis XIV

30
(p. 547)
“Divide in order to reign”:
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758-1794) led France into the period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror (1792 and September 1793-July 1794), and is reputed to have followed the axiom “Divide in order to reign” as a political strategy by which he maintained his hold on the government. For example, he sent other members of the Committee of Public Safety to missions to the French frontiers, removing them from the daily exercise of power. Though known as the “incorruptible” or the “uncorrupted one,” Robespierre promoted espionage, fear, abrogation of civil rights, and torture, and ordered the guillotining of about 1,285 French citizens, including members of the nobility and the royal family. Eventually, Robespierre was himself guillotined.

Alexandre Dumas’s tale of the swashbuckling Musketeers never seems to tire, and two centuries after publication the novel continues to inspire interpretations and sequels.

Dumas himself wrote two sequels to
The Three Musketeers: Twenty Years After
(1845) and
The Vicomte de Bragelonne
(1847), creating a trilogy sometimes known as the D‘Artagnan romances.
Twenty Years After
takes place in 1648, two decades following the close of
The Three Musketeers.
Charles I, the king of England, is on the verge of losing his throne to the revolutionary Oliver Cromwell, and D’Artagnan convinces his now-retired colleagues that their services are needed to protect the purity of the throne. Meanwhile, Mordaunt, the son of Milady, is determined to foil the efforts of those who killed his mother.

The Vicomte de Bragelonne,
also known as The Man in the Iron Mask, joins Aramis, Athos, Porthos, and D’Artagnan as they plan to free a prisoner, known only as Philippe, from the infamous Bastille. Philippe has suffered for eight years in an oppressive iron mask, all the while kept ignorant of his crime. By an incredible twist, the release of the prisoner helps further the true goal of the Musketeers: dethroning Louis XIV, who has become corrupt.

Numerous authors, attempting to capitalize on the fame of
The Three Musketeers,
have written spurious sequels.
The True Memories of D‘Artagnan the Musketeer,
by Emile Desbeaux, appeared in 1874, immediately following Dumas’s death. In 1883 Paul Mahalin published
Son of Porthos,
which he falsely claimed was a novelization of a lost play by Dumas. Henry Llewellyn Williams, a prolific translator of Dumas, also falsely claimed that his 1901
D’Artagnan
the
King-Maker
was a novelized version of a Dumas play.

Another icon of French literature, Cyrano de Bergerac, appears with D‘Artagnan in a delightfully inventive series by Paul Féval
fils
and M. Lassez. Cyrano, the title character in the famous play by Edmond Rostand, is first an enemy, in
D’Artagnan
Contre Cyrano de Bergerac (D’Artagnan
Against
Cyrano de
Bergerac, 1925), a novel in four volumes. After numerous adventures the two resolve their differences and become great friends, as recorded in D
Artagnan et Cyrano Reconcilies
(D
Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled,
1928), a novel in three volumes. English translations of the novels and their individual volumes have appeared under a variety of titles.

A recent sequel, the 1993
Le Dernier Amour d’Aramis (The
Last Love
of Aramis)
by Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, is a memoir told from the point of view of Aramis; it received considerable literary acclaim, but to date no English translation has appeared.

Rudyard Kipling, celebrated author of
Kim
and The Jungle Book, used “The Three Musketeers” as the name of his series of eighteen stories about three soldiers, inspired by Kipling’s association with British regiments in India. Each of the men—an Irishman, a Yorkshire native, and a Cockney—speak in their own dialect, which Kipling captures with unflinching accuracy.

 

 

More than a dozen movie adaptations of The Three Musketeers appeared in the twentieth century, many bringing together some of Hollywood’s brightest stars. Douglas Fairbanks, well-loved star of early cinema, starred as D‘Artagnan in The Three
Musketeers
(1921), directed by Fred Niblo. In a light-hearted 1948 production directed by George Sidney, Gene Kelly plays D’Artagnan and uses his dancing moves in numerous fencing scenes, while Lana Turner plays Milady and Angela Lansbury takes the part of Queen Anne.

A 1973 version directed by Richard Lester features some of the most famous players in Hollywood, performing at the top of their careers. Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, and Frank Finlay are stunning as D’Artagnan, Aramis, Athos, and Porthos, respectively; Charlton Heston as Cardinal Richelieu and Faye Dunaway as Milady add a deliciously nasty presence to the steamy intrigue and drama. The version is also famous for a lawsuit that ensued when Richard Lester determined he had enough footage for two films and released a second installment,
The Four Musketeers,
without making additional payment to the actors. A judge ruled in the actors’ favor.