August 1, 2023 • 52 mins
Alexander Dumas is famous for his swashbuckling novel The Count of Monte Cristo, but more thrilling than fiction is the real-life story of his father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. Born the son of an enslaved woman, Dumas would become one of the most celebrated soldiers in the French army, and would end up on a collision course with another young general: Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener Discretion advised it looked
like they would be facing another winter with too little
bread and not enough firewood for French peasants. In October
(00:24):
seventeen ninety five, it turned out that the recent revolution
hadn't actually changed all that much. Those who starved under
King Louis the sixteenth were starving still, and the government
that had replaced the royal family was by turns corrupt, unstable,
(00:45):
and impotent. Pro Royalists wanted a constitutional monarchy, and when
the governing body at the time passed an extremely unpopular
law limiting the pro Royalist party's power, the French did
what they do best. Riot. Tens of thousands of pro
(01:07):
Royalists marched on Paris. They gathered in front of the
Tullery Palace, where the representatives of the National Convention government sat.
The rioters didn't have much by way of artillery, but
they outnumbered the National Guard four to one. The National
Guard was led by a general who wasn't savvy enough
(01:30):
for the job. When he met with the rebel leaders,
they promised that they would disarm and He happily retreated,
believing them, but the rebels did not disarm and the
general was replaced. The new general would need to be
someone ruthless. The Thermidorian leader on the ground remembered a
(01:53):
brilliant young officer who might just be the man for
the job. Send for Bonaparte, he said. Napoleon Bonaparte had
been idling away his twenties at the topographical Bureau after
making a wrong career move, and he was practically salivating
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at the chance to lead an army again. He would
remind his country that he was a leader to be
reckoned with. Bonaparte instructed his men to go to a
nearby military camp and bring back every cannon they could
get their hands on. If someone stands in your way,
kill them, he instructed. His men. Soon returned with forty cannons,
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which they packed with grape shot, small metal rounds in
canvas bags that exploded upon firing, which could rip through
a dozen bodies in a dozen directions at the same time.
Not even in the bloodiest battles of the revolution did
anyone think to use this weapon on civilians. And again,
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no one ever thought like Napoleon. The young commander spent
the morning riding from station to station, inspecting every cannon
to make sure it was equipped for maximum damage. He
had just been given his first part in the pun
shot at victory. In years, defeat was not an option.
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He didn't tell the troops to fire until it was
absolutely clear there would be no peaceful surrender. But once
he gave the order, the damage was brutal. Riders who
weren't screaming in pain were screaming in fear, accompanied by
the staccato boom of cannons. Historians would write that Napoleon
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gave the pro royalists quote a whiff of grape shot,
but that day Paris smelled only of blood. In the end,
around three hundred civilians died, and the Republican Guard under
Napoleon only lost around thirty men. For his efforts, Napoleon
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was awarded a salary of forty eight thousand francs, given
command of the French Army of Italy, and even negotiated
a plumb gig in the diplomatic service for his brother Joseph.
Little did the Convention know what it had just set
into motion. This was the beginning of the end of
(04:33):
the French Revolution. The beginning of the beginning of the
Napoleonic Age. In terms of the history of Europe, Napoleon
was a great man in the capital g sense of
the word. Greatness only rises to its full heights when
challenged by arrival. Serena has Venus, Rocky had Apollo, and
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after putting down his rebellion in Paris, there was only
one man that Napoleon thought of as his adversary. His
rival would be the undisputed star of the French military,
the Black Count, the Angel of Death, a man whose
son would go on to write stories still celebrated in
(05:21):
the canon of literature, but whose own name would make
a mark on the world. The man Napoleon feared Toma
Alexandra Duma Davy. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood.
(05:43):
Flashback to seventeen eighty nine years before Napoleon put down
the pro royalist sympathizers in the streets, the bloody French
Revolution and equally bloody bred Riot had already made Paris
a place of chaos. Toma Alexander Duma, a young private,
and his unit had been called to the hunting town
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of Ville Coterret, a few hours outside of Paris to
keep the peace there in case the violence spread. As
the town had no barracks, the soldiers stayed among the people,
and Duma was personally invited by a man named Claude
Lebret to stay at his inn and even to dine
with his family. That night. At dinner, Duma sang for
(06:29):
his supper, so to speak, charming the Lebret with stories
from his youth spent in a sugar colony in what
is now Haiti, telling the tale of how his father,
the son of a marquis, had briefly sold Alex into
slavery in order to afford passage for both of them
back to France, and how when they arrived, his father
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had enrolled him in the finest school in the city,
where Alex learned how to ride and duel. He actually
learned the dueling from the greatest swordsman in France, the
Chevalier de Saint George, who we covered in a two
part episode in June. The Chevalier was also an accomplished violinist,
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and perhaps it was he the Chevalier, who confirmed in
the young Alex Dumas's mind the notion that anyone of
any color could aspire to greatness in whatever endeavor they chose.
Because Toma Alexander Dumat was black, he had been born
to an enslaved woman that his father had owned as property.
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Before Dumas's father left the French colony where Alex was born,
he sold Alex's mother and Alex's siblings. I think it's
important to stop and think for a minute here about
that cruelty, that dehumanization. It was only Alex who was
brought back to France. Alexander was temporarily sold into slavery
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himself for his father to pay for that passage. When
Alex arrived, his father repurchased him and then officially freed him.
Given the unique opportunity presented to him, Duma was able
to spend the early part of his twenties as a
Parisian socialite. But when his father married their housekeeper and
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cut off his allowance, alex did what all young men
of his station did joined the military. Typically well to
do boys with noble pedigree would have been able to
enlist as officers, but for Duma, the color of his
skin made that a little challenging. There weren't rules against it, really,
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but it was a no man's land, and it would
have been hard for Duma to receive the position he
was entitled to. Screw it, he thought, he enlisted in
the Queen's dragoons as a mere private. Dumas's father was
infuriated and war that he wouldn't let his son drag
their family name Davy through the mud. Fine alex reasoned,
(09:08):
I'll take my mother's surname, and so he dropped his
father's last name Davy and became a Duma. Particularly taken
with Alexander's stories at the La Beret's dinner table was
the innkeeper's pretty daughter, Marie Louise. She wrote to a
friend the night that she first met Duma, he is
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a fine figure of a man. The fact that she
was white and he was black, well by Rachel, was
for Marie Louise and her family no issue at all.
That Alex's mother had been enslaved wasn't a knock on
his character, and it actually explained much of his committed
zeal to the French Revolution. To zoom out a little bit,
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this was a very complex time for race relations in France.
Revolutionary idea deals at the time were challenging long held
assumptions about equality, or rather inequality. Those of mixed race,
like Duma, were actually considered a unique class, separate from
both whites and blacks. Many were rich, some even owned
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their own slaves. There was then, as today, widespread racism,
and the ever changing government occasionally passed laws to limit
the rights of non white people, dictating what they could
wear and what names and titles they could use. Laws
like these spoke to an attitude of supremacy, but did
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not in themselves make life considerably harder for free non
white people. They simply wore other clothes. There were more
pernicious laws, like an attempt to round up and register
all non white people in France, but the government was
far to disorganize to ever actually follow through on the plan.
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In some circles, it was actually considered fashionable to be
not quite white. A quote exotic heritage made you more interesting,
and even the most hardened racists in France liked to
see Duma as an quote exception. It was simply an
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accepted fact. He was the strongest soldier in the army.
Legend had it he could hang from a ceiling beam
and lift a horse with his legs. Would anyone dare
to make a belittling remark to the man who won
three duels in a single day at six foot one
in an era when the average height for a man
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was five foot eight. Alex Dumas cut a very imposing figure,
and he became the sort of Chuck Norris character of
the French army. To Marie Louise, the innkeeper's daughter, and
to others, he was quite literally, tall, dark and handsome,
and she was thrilled when her father agreed to an engagement.
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But like any protective dad, the innkeeper wanted to know
that his daughter would be taken care of and told
Duma that they couldn't wed until he had risen to
the rank of sergeant. In the fall of seventeen ninety two,
Duma returned from the front lines to claim his bride.
But he was no sergeant. He was a war hero
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and lieutenant colonel of an entire unit of men like himself,
known as the Black Legion. Duma was a shooting star
in the military, and soon the government was assigning him
a series of herculean challenges. It's almost comical how he
was dispatched to fix any problem that had stymied others.
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Oh this Spanish fleet had defeated the last two generals
we sent in try Duma, and after that, would you
mind capturing Oh, I don't know the Alps, even though
you've never seen, let alone fought in the snow. By
the age of thirty two, he was equivalent to a
four star general. He would be the first person of
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color to achieve the ranks of brigadier general, division general,
and General in chief. Duma was a ferocious soldier on
his own, once single handedly taking twelve enemies prisoner, but
much of his success could also be attributed to his
style as a leader. Armies in those days weren't particularly
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well trained or organized. They often didn't have enough equipment,
and instead of being paid by their government, they just
stole from whatever place they were invading. Raping the local
women was another common occurrence. Duma was having none of
that isuted order and stability, and he was unfailingly fair
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to citizens, earning him the somewhat derisive nickname mister Humanity.
In return for his men's loyalty, he advocated for them,
writing a letter after letter to Paris to secure payment, boots, rations,
and horses for his men. Not only was looting not allowed,
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it wasn't necessary. There was seemingly no sealing on his career,
regardless of his race. In seventeen ninety four, France officially
abolished slavery throughout the Empire. Black and mixed race legislators
joined the governing body, the Council of the Five hundred.
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The first integrated secondary school in Europe opened in Paris,
the National Colonial Institute, a world class academy educating both
children of the elite and scholarship students from the colonies.
But just as true greatness was seemingly within Dumas's grasp,
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did the unstoppable force of his career run into the
immovable object of Napoleon Bonaparte. By seventeen ninety six, both
were generals. Napoleon was put in charge of the French
Army of Italy, and Dumas was assigned to work just
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under him. The two men almost immediately did not like
each other. Dumas was one of the last officers to
arrive in Italy, and he was dismayed by what he saw.
Deference to Napoleon was based not on his admirable qualities,
but on the fact that he promised his ally's riches
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Napoleon allowed looting, even arranged it and elevated it. His
soldiers didn't just steal food from the Italian towns they invaded,
they made the Italians cook feasts for them. Duma once
had to intervene to keep an entire towns women from
getting trapped on a bridge by soldiers where they would
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have surely been assaulted. Under these circumstances, how could Duma
be expected to implement his more gentlemanly style of conduct.
The soldiers were in a position not unlike a kid
playing their parents off one another. Oh, Mommy, Alex says,
I can't pillage, well, Daddy, Napoleon said it was okay.
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Napoleon took pillaging to a new and sophisticated level. He
made a project of identifying the most valuable treasures and
artworks from each region and shipped them back to France.
He brought experts on his expeditions just for that purpose.
He also charged Milan twenty million francs cash for having
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been liberated from Austria, and he repeated that pattern everywhere
his army went. Duma did what he could to limit
Napoleon's damage, but if it was all in the service
of spreading the ideals of the French Revolution far and wide, well,
he'd mostly follow his orders. He played a pivotal role
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in the Siege of Mantua and was understandably angry when
he found out that Napoleon's aid had written to the
general that Duma had stayed out of the action. Alex
composed his own letter explaining the situation to Napoleon. General,
I have learned that the jackass whose business it is
to report to you upon the Battle of the twenty seventh,
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stated that I stayed in observation throughout that battle. I
don't wish any such observation on him, since he would
have shit in his pants. Saluta and brotherhood Alex do end.
Alex's reputation continued to grow. Taking small groups of soldiers
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on strategic missions, Duma easily recognizable scared the living daylights
out of the Austrian army. They began to call him
d Schwartze Chuffel, or the black Devil. Just as Duma
was too smart to fight Napoleon directly, Napoleon was too
smart to let go of Duma. He praised his general's
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victories and gave him the nickname the Horacious cocolos of
the Tyrol, as well as ordering him a new set
of pistols after he lost his In seventeen ninety seven,
Duma received a letter from his wife informing him that
their second daughter, a toddler named Louise, had died. He
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went home to be with his family for a few
months before being called back into service once again to
serve Napoleon, as he had a tempted to conquer a
foreign land. But this time it wasn't Italy they were after,
and it wasn't that classic French enemy England either. No.
General Bonaparte was taking his men on a much more
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perilous journey, and he wouldn't tell anybody where as if
to remind everyone of the pecking order, Napoleon installed himself
on a ship called the Orient, which was at the
time the largest on earth, and he put Duma on
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the mid sized ship called William Tell. Because Napoleon could
not earn his men's respect as Duma had, he once
again tried to buy it, promising every soldier six acres
of land once they got to wherever they were going.
He didn't say, which must have made it hard to pack.
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First stop, Malta, a Mediterranean island that had been ruled
by knights whose income came from their estates back in France.
When the French Revolution did away with feudal dues, the
richest Maltens suffered and weren't exactly friendly to the revolutionary
government's army that came knocking at their port. But Napoleon
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had a plan. He promised to pay whatever price they
wanted once he and his fleet got inside the harbor,
and as a sweetener, the Grand Master could have a
principality in Germany. Why not. Once Napoleon's fleet was inside,
Napoleon gave the Maltens three days to get the hell out.
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What he lacked in honor, he more than made up
for in savvy. In Malta, Dumas saw for the first
time when Napoleon would look like, not just as a leader,
but as a ruler. Napoleon declared declared religious freedom for all,
protecting Jews from persecution and abolishing torture. He freed two
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thousand enslaved people and set about modernizing the infrastructure. He
planned hospitals, schools, post offices, and street lights. He instituted
rent control and passed into law the early version of
what would become the Napoleonic Code, and he made all
of these progressive changes without going through any kind of
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red tape or bureaucracy or democracy. Napoleon was ruling like
a dictator. But there was no time for alex to
dwell too much on that, because Napoleon had finally revealed
what their final destination would be, Egypt. It had long
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been Napoleon's ambition to conquer Egypt, as Alexander the Great
once did. The cities were ancient, even compared to Rome,
and they were believed to hold great treasures, not to
mention the incredible Pyramids, and it was in a highly
covetable strategic position, given Britain's reliance on trade with India.
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Taking Egypt in the name of France and liberating its
people from the Mamelukes who controlled the region was a
grand and romantic notion. It was also, as everyone would
soon see, a pretty dumb idea. In the wee hours
of July second, four thousand frenchmen stepped ashore, led by
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Napoleon and Dumont. Napoleon had put Duma in charge of
the cavalry. The problem was there wasn't much cavalry to
speak of the plan was to get most of their
horses once they arrived, but horses were hard to come by,
and it was one hundred and ten degrees outside quote unquote.
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Liberating Italy had involved bloodshed, yes, but also feasting. There
was no feasting when the army showed up to seize Alexandria.
The citizens weren't particularly happy to see them, and the
soldiers kept getting attacked by Bedouin tribes. Napoleon's army took
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Alexandria easily enough, but there was no reward, just the
prospect of a long, very hot march to Cairo. To
call it a suicide mission is both insensitive and correct.
The men were in dark wool uniforms carrying forty pound packs.
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They were starving, and so so thirsty that many preferred
a bullet to the long, slow agony that had taken
their brothers. They were marching alongside. If a man became
weak and fell behind, he would be picked off by
a Bedouin tribe. Many men caught an eye infection that
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burned and hussed and rendered them partially blind. Others suffered dysentery.
At the smaller cities they stopped at soldiers standing guard
had their throats slit in the night, not by an
enemy army, but by the very citizens they'd assumed would
greet them with cheers as liberators. It was clear whose
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mistake this was. The man who decided to surprise the
enemy by attacking in the summer, the man who hadn't
made any arrangements for a way to carry water around Napoleon,
and who wanted to conquer six acres of desert anyway.
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But they were either too loyal or too tired to mutiny,
so onward they marched. But Duma always had the energy
to take Napoleon down a peg. One night, he scrounged
up a few of these delicious novel fruits they called watermelons,
and he invited the other generals back to his tent
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for a chet. They kicked around the question of why
they were even there, what their commander's plan even was.
Was Napoleon doing his best with an impossible task, or
at Paris used this as an excuse to get rid
of him once they reached Cairo, Should they the other
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generals make a plan to stop One of Napoleon's informants
overheard the chatter. These men who doubted their leader, who
would refuse to march past their next destination. There's a
word for that in the military coup. Things came to
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a head after the French finally took Cairo. Napoleon confronted
Duma about what he'd heard, making it clear that he
wouldn't tolerate criticism or questioning from anyone, even a fellow general.
War makes strange bedfellows. Until this point, the two men
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had been fair weather friends. They were always in a
kind of cold war, but put their differences aside for
the sake of their missions, and when things were good,
they even got along. Napoleon's wife, Josephine, who was white
but had herself been born in the French colony of Martinique,
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genuinely liked Duma. If either she or Dumas's wife, Marie
Louise ever had a boy, both families had promised to
be godparents to the other's son, and, whether begrudgingly or not,
Napoleon had praised Dumas's skill on the battlefield, which Duma
perhaps naively took to heart. But the bright Egyptian sun
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shed a new light on their fundamental incompatibilities. Napoleon resented
Duma everywhere they went. The Egyptians marveled at the sight
of a black man leading a white army, and he
was so tall and imposing, they just assumed he was
in charge. When Duma put down an uprising by riding
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into a mosque, rebels screamed, the Angel, the Angel. They
thought he was the angel of death. You can imagine
how little Napoleon liked that. Even if the whole Napoleon
complex insecure about being short is an English bit of propaganda,
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I'm sure he didn't love everyone praising this tall, handsome,
gallant soldier. Actually, you don't have to imagine how Napoleon felt,
because years later Napoleon commissioned a painting of this incident,
and he replaced Duma in the painting with a nameless
white cavalry man. In another painting, it was Napoleon himself
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who saved the day during that rebellion. Here we have
to wonder how much of Napoleon's antipathy towards Duma was racial.
It's likely Napoleon would have hated anyone of any color
who was as impressive a rival as Duma, but to
ignore race would be completely naive. If Duma had been white,
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perhaps Napoleon would have tried harder to recruit him as
an ally. How did Duma feel about Napoleon. In one
potentially revealing incident, Duma discovered a stash of treasure while
excavating a home that had apparently been abandoned. Since the
goods had no owner, he could have kept them for himself,
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but he turned them over to Napoleon, writing quote, the
leopard cannot change his spots, nor can I change my
character and principles. As an honest man, I must concede
to you the fact of a treasure I have just discovered.
I abandon it to your disposition, reminding you only that
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I am a father and without fortune. End quote. On
its surface, a straightforward thing to do, but I detect
two possibly passive, aggressive digs in that letter. One, he
reminded Napoleon that he was an honest man. They both
knew that Napoleon would have stashed the stuff if he
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had been the one to find it. Second, he had
every right to note that as a dad, he needed money,
but Napoleon hadn't fathered any children at the time, so
it's possible that's another bit of a one up, and
we can pretty safely assume Duma was not a fan
of what Napoleon was doing with the enslaved population of Cairo,
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which was nothing sure. Napoleon had liberated thousands in Malta,
but that had been a pragmatic decision on Napoleon's part
to bring the island into the fold of the French Revolution.
It hadn't been an ethical decision. Egypt was more of
an outpost, and the more hierarchical its society, the more
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firmly Napoleon could establish himself at the top of it.
For Duma, the son of a slave who had briefly
been enslaved himself, it must have been maddening. At least,
the two men agreed on one thing. Duma should leave
Egypt as soon as possible. The two men would never
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see or speak to each other again. Duma hopped aboard
a malten ship bound for home, but it was a leaky,
rickety thing, and when they hit a storm, Duma tossed
anything that weighed anything overboard, the horses he'd purchased, the
Arabian coffee that he'd planned to resell, all of their cannonballs,
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all their food, water. It was just enough to get
them safely to the nearest port, which happened to be Toronto.
In Naples, Duma sent the governor a letter explaining their
situation and asking for assistance while they made the necessary
repairs and arrangements. The governor said, sure, come on in,
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but if you don't mind a short quarantine, just in case,
so you don't spread disease. This was a common practice
at the time, and Duma thought nothing of it, But
then he had an experience that I think many of
us can relate to. What he thought would be a
short quarantine turned into two years, two years of life
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ruining imprisonment. While Duma had been in Egypt, news that
the French army conquered Naples had reached his camp, and
so when his rickety ship had managed to dock there,
he had every reason to expect friendly faces on the shore.
What he didn't know is that a pro royalist faction
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led by the Cardinal Fabrizio Rufo, had recently retaken control
of Naples. The group called themselves the Holy Faith Army,
and they had managed to overtake the revolutionary French government.
Almost everyone on Dumas's ship was allowed to return to
their home country after signing a pledge that they wouldn't
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take up arms against the Holy Faith Army for two years.
But Duma and his fellow general, Jean Baptiste Moncourt, were
locked up with no real long term plan for what
was to become of them. The two generals slept on
beds of straw atop stone benches, and they had little
to eat or drink. They could meet up once a
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day in an enclosed courtyard, but other than that they
had no one to talk to except the guards, who
mocked them. But in other ways things were sort of chivalrous.
Duma was allowed to keep all of the money he'd
brought with him, which he would use to pay for
food and other items throughout his imprisonment. At the start
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he even had a servant, and they let him keep
a small goat he'd picked up in Egypt, I think
as a pet. Duma wrote again and again to the
cardinal asking for a meeting, but the only visitor he
got was a young man who introduced himself as Crown
Prince Francis, son of King Ferdinand the Fourth of the
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Kingdom of Naples, ignoring Dumas's pleas for a meeting with
the French ambassador, the quote unquote crown Prince asked a
few questions about Egypt, and then left. He was actually
not a crown prince at all, but an impostor trying
to gather information to fight against the French. But although
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he was a fake prince, he was actually a decent
military leader, at least decent enough to round up an army,
which he took north, where he was promptly captured by
the French. Well, great, now they could do a prisoner
swap and Duma could go home, except there had been
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a miscommunication that fake prince hadn't actually been captured by
the French. He was killed, there was no chance of
a prisoner swap. Imagine the psychological torture Duma must have
been suffering. Every path to freedom to a twist and
a turn, then led to a dead end, and his
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only visitor was a guy lying about his identity who
then seemed like he would be a getaway car and
then ended up being nothing at all. Dumas's mental and
physical help declined precipitously shortly after being locked up. He
suffered a quote strange paralysis in his face. A few
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months after arriving, he was having a biscuit and a
glass of wine while taking a bath. When he doubled
over in pain, his servant found him a mobile sweating
in a pool of his own vomit. A doctor was summoned,
and when he arrived, the doctor looked so scared and
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to Duma, so surprised to see that Duma was alive
that Duma immediately hit upon the idea that he had
been poisoned and the doctor was actually in on it.
Instead of listening to whatever remedies his maybe would be
killer prescribed, Dumas preferred the treatment of his friend Manscore,
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who had also come to hell. He fed Duma olive
oil and lemon juice and gave him enema. After enema,
which was the treatment for parasites at the time, the
possibly murderous doctor would return to give Duma blisters and
ear injections that may be contributed to Dumas's partial deafness.
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Later on, Dumas would claim in his recollections of this
period that the doctor tried to have a secret meeting
with him, but he was so weak and strained that
he never got a clear idea on what exactly the
conspiracy was. When the doctor dropped dead A few days later.
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Dumas ascribed it to a cover up, and his pet
goat also died. Dumas's knew doctor was kind enough, but
Dumas still became half blind, half deaf and facial paralysis.
Remained scared and alone. He couldn't sleep and became weak,
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later saying he suffered quote an abundant and continuous loss
of sperm, which maybe a euphemism or maybe just a
problem that he had. I don't know, but if there
was a conspiracy within the fortress, there was also definitely
a conspiracy without an underground society. Friends of the French
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smuggled a medical textbook to Duma with the section on
poisonings underlined. This gesture of solidarity and the seeming confirmation
that he wasn't being crazy, bolstered his spirits. A few
nights later, the Friends of the French gave Duma another gift,
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lowering a package into his cell on a string. Inside
the plain paper was bark containing the medicinal herb quinine
and possibly the best present you can give an imprisoned
frenchman a hunk of chocolate. Back in France, Dumas's wife,
Marie Louise was trying to find out why her husband
(38:23):
had seemingly disappeared into thin air. Alex had written her
that he was about to head home. Then she got
no more letters, and more importantly, no Alex. She wrote
to his fellow military leaders, the war ministry, and every
government official she could think of. Many of her pleas
(38:45):
got no response. When she did hear back, it was
with a cold, perfunctory we're looking into it and will
let you know when we know. She had no income
and no idea when she would see the father of
her child again. I imagine that she was going a
little crazy too. You would think that the French government
(39:08):
would be keen to get one of its most effective
generals back, but they were distracted by a series of
military defeats as other European nations formed an alliance against them.
All the progress Duma had made wiped away. Jews were
back in ghettos, republics dismantled in weeks, and once again
(39:33):
in the chaos opportunity. Napoleon's brother Joseph had maneuvered his
way to the top of politics as President of the
Council of the Five hundred. The older Buonaparte returned from
the desert with tales only of his successes. Together, the
brothers conspired to stage a good old fashioned coups de'tat
(39:59):
how handy that an intimidating general who would certainly have
opposed such a maneuver, was safely tucked away in a
Neapolitan fortress, out of sight, out of mind. Napoleon discovered
that he didn't need Duma to fight his battles with
other countries, and in fact, he preferred to be the
(40:20):
only star in the sky. Napoleon used his absolute power
to achieve goals that Duma would have opposed. Even more
strongly than Napoleon's despotism. He began to roll back the
tide of emancipation. Once in power, Napoleon aligned himself with
(40:41):
pro slavery groups, and while he wouldn't instate the practice
at home, he passed laws with the goal of bringing
slavery back in the French colonies. In eighteen o two,
he drew up a law stating quote beyond the Cape
of Good Hope, slavery would be continued in conformity with
the laws and regulations of before seventeen eighty nine, and
(41:04):
the trade of blacks on behalf of those above mentioned
colonies could begin again end quote self serving as ever,
Napoleon had previously used the threat of slavery to get
free blacks to fall in line under his rule. A
few years before he reinstated slavery, Napoleon had told the
(41:27):
people of Dumas's hometown, San do Ming quote remember brave Negroes,
that the French people alone recognize your liberty and your
equal rights. End quote. As Napoleon was crossing at the Alps,
the same mountains that Duma had once climbed, Duma found
(41:48):
out that once again his captors in Naples were trying
to kill him. Why if that were true, didn't they
just slit his throat is not a question that he
seems to have ever addressed. But he was sure that
his upcoming move to another fortress was secretly cover for
his murder. The night he was to be moved, the
(42:12):
prison governor burst into the prison with a pack of
armed men. He told Duma and Mascort to pack their things.
Duma said no. The governor drew his sword. Duma was weak,
he was a prisoner, he was unarmed, he was outnumbered,
but he was still alex. Duma and he never backed
(42:36):
down from a fight. He brandished his walking stick and
drew himself up to his full height. Miraculously, it worked
and the guards backed down, at least temporarily. He was
later moved to the other fortress, and news of his
(42:56):
standoff with the governor reached King Furdokand, who was appalled
at the insubordination and decreed that Duma and man's cork
would be kept in solitary confinement. But he gave that
order to a man named Biancei, who had a different
view of the events, and he found the walking stick
incident humorous and a little admirable, and he decided to
(43:21):
disregard his Majesty's note. By the turn of the nineteenth century,
the nations of Europe were lining up to cut deals
with Emperor Napoleon. One of Napoleon's generals, Mara, who had
served alongside Duma and knew what had happened to him,
negotiated a release of all French prisoners into Naples surrender.
(43:46):
In June eighteen oh one, Duma finally came home. He'd
somehow held on to a couple souvenirs from Egypt, which
he gave to his daughter Amy, now eight years old.
The reunion was joyous. Marie Louise was pregnant again in
a matter of months, But there were certain inescapable facts
(44:10):
that marred the homecoming. The first was Alex's health, which
would never fully recover. He was plagued by headaches and
tonightas in addition to the partial loss of vision and hearing.
And then there was the state of his family, bankrupt.
When he was well enough to ride again, Duma begged
(44:31):
to be given another command in the army. No one
would give him the time of day or even back
pay for all the time he'd been in prison. He
was promised half a million francs for his ordeal. He
would never see a penny of it. Finally, there was
what Napoleon had done to the country. A divided people
(44:52):
are more easily oppressed, and race was an easy enough
way to split everyone up, made interracial marriage illegal, and
expelled all non white people from his sham government. He
kicked the scholarship students out of the National Colonial Institute
(45:13):
and the school soon closed. All veterans of color were
banned from living in or around Paris. Duma had to
get special dispensation just to keep his house, but other
non white men who had served in the army were
not so lucky. But even if they were poor outcasts,
(45:34):
alex and Marie Louise had each other. They had their daughter,
and in July eighteen oh two, their son, Alexander. Father
and son adored each other, and though they only had
a few years together, Alexander would retain core memories of
his father. Duma was diagnosed with stomach cancer in eighteen
(45:57):
oh five and soon took to bed in constant pain.
He couldn't bear any noise or movement, but little Alexander
was allowed to visit alex Dumat died at the end
of February eighteen o six, though in some ways he
had been dead since Egypt, stripped of the freedom and
(46:20):
glory that had always defined him. But in another way,
perhaps Napoleon, in his indifference, did Duma one tiny favor
in keeping him out of the army during his final years.
In four decades, Duma had been a slave, an aristocrat,
a student, a commander, a hero, a prisoner. He had
(46:43):
seen every climate and many countries. Finally, after his release
from prison, because he wasn't granted command again, he finally
had time just to be a dad. After her husband died,
Marie Louise took a job in a tobacconist shop. While
she begged for the pension that she was rightfully owed
(47:06):
as a military widow, she'd never get it. She knew
very well why Napoleon hated her whole family. When one
general made the mistake of inquiring about the remaining dumases
to Napoleon, the Emperor apparently stamped his foot and yelled, quote,
(47:27):
I forbid you ever to speak to me of that man.
But fortune would have one more reversal. Yet Napoleon would
die in exile and be remembered as a despot. Marie
Louise would live long enough to see her son restore
the family to glory and fortune as a novelist. And
(47:50):
though racists in the literary community would seek to exclude
the author of the Count of Monte Cristo based on
his color, he never for a moment doubted his talent.
He was, after all, the son of Alex Duma. This
(48:18):
episode wouldn't have been possible without the incredible book by
Tom Rice, The Black Count, Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the
Real Count of Monte Cristo and if you were interested
in this episode, you should absolutely pick up a copy
of that book because it's fascinating. That's our story of
(48:38):
Toma Alexander Duma and his rise in the military and
running a foul of Napoleon. But keep listening after a
brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about
the cultural legacy of the French in Egypt. Is the
(49:04):
pen Mightier than the Sword? In July seventeen ninety nine,
Napoleon's Egypt expedition made its most lasting contribution to society.
But it wasn't military men like Napoleon or Duma who
led the way. It was Pierre Francois Bouchard, an army
engineer and a member of Napoleon's Arts and Sciences Society,
(49:29):
who had been recruited not for his prowess on the battlefield,
but for his cultural and scientific knowledge. Napoleon had brought
along a delegation of what were called savants, like the
art experts he had brought to Italy to identify the
most valuable paintings. These savants were supposed to impress and
(49:51):
educate the locals with their technology and collect important cultural
artifacts to bring back to Paris. They also establish the
Egyptian Scientific Institute, which still exists today and which was
the oldest European building in Egypt until it was partially
destroyed in the Arab Spring. But on this afternoon, Bouchard
(50:15):
was supervising a group of workers as they tore down
a wall. While digging, his men encountered a rock too
heavy to move, and while a soldier might have simply
moved on, Bouchard took a closer look. It wasn't a boulder,
but a slab inscribed with hieroglyphics which no one on
(50:39):
earth could read, but also Greek, which Bouchard knew. And
what's more, part of the Greek texts explicitly stated that
its message was also written in hieroglyphics. In a very
real way, the discovery of what's now known as the
(50:59):
row Zetta Stone unlocked our understanding of ancient Egypt and
therefore the world. Is it too corny to say that
this text brought society closer together than any empire ever could.
The actual text of the stone, which now sits at
the British Museum, is about the king at the time
(51:22):
it was inscribed, Ptolemy the Fifth, and how he reduced
taxes and put down rebellions. Sounds like someone Duma and
Napoleon might have gotten along with or tried to kill.
Sometimes it's hard to tell with men like that. Noble
(51:54):
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
from Aaron. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me
Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
(52:18):
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener Discretion advised it looked
like they would be facing another winter with too little
bread and not enough firewood for French peasants. In October
(00:24):
seventeen ninety five, it turned out that the recent revolution
hadn't actually changed all that much. Those who starved under
King Louis the sixteenth were starving still, and the government
that had replaced the royal family was by turns corrupt, unstable,
(00:45):
and impotent. Pro Royalists wanted a constitutional monarchy, and when
the governing body at the time passed an extremely unpopular
law limiting the pro Royalist party's power, the French did
what they do best. Riot. Tens of thousands of pro
(01:07):
Royalists marched on Paris. They gathered in front of the
Tullery Palace, where the representatives of the National Convention government sat.
The rioters didn't have much by way of artillery, but
they outnumbered the National Guard four to one. The National
Guard was led by a general who wasn't savvy enough
(01:30):
for the job. When he met with the rebel leaders,
they promised that they would disarm and He happily retreated,
believing them, but the rebels did not disarm and the
general was replaced. The new general would need to be
someone ruthless. The Thermidorian leader on the ground remembered a
(01:53):
brilliant young officer who might just be the man for
the job. Send for Bonaparte, he said. Napoleon Bonaparte had
been idling away his twenties at the topographical Bureau after
making a wrong career move, and he was practically salivating
(02:13):
at the chance to lead an army again. He would
remind his country that he was a leader to be
reckoned with. Bonaparte instructed his men to go to a
nearby military camp and bring back every cannon they could
get their hands on. If someone stands in your way,
kill them, he instructed. His men. Soon returned with forty cannons,
(02:37):
which they packed with grape shot, small metal rounds in
canvas bags that exploded upon firing, which could rip through
a dozen bodies in a dozen directions at the same time.
Not even in the bloodiest battles of the revolution did
anyone think to use this weapon on civilians. And again,
(03:01):
no one ever thought like Napoleon. The young commander spent
the morning riding from station to station, inspecting every cannon
to make sure it was equipped for maximum damage. He
had just been given his first part in the pun
shot at victory. In years, defeat was not an option.
(03:26):
He didn't tell the troops to fire until it was
absolutely clear there would be no peaceful surrender. But once
he gave the order, the damage was brutal. Riders who
weren't screaming in pain were screaming in fear, accompanied by
the staccato boom of cannons. Historians would write that Napoleon
(03:49):
gave the pro royalists quote a whiff of grape shot,
but that day Paris smelled only of blood. In the end,
around three hundred civilians died, and the Republican Guard under
Napoleon only lost around thirty men. For his efforts, Napoleon
(04:10):
was awarded a salary of forty eight thousand francs, given
command of the French Army of Italy, and even negotiated
a plumb gig in the diplomatic service for his brother Joseph.
Little did the Convention know what it had just set
into motion. This was the beginning of the end of
(04:33):
the French Revolution. The beginning of the beginning of the
Napoleonic Age. In terms of the history of Europe, Napoleon
was a great man in the capital g sense of
the word. Greatness only rises to its full heights when
challenged by arrival. Serena has Venus, Rocky had Apollo, and
(04:57):
after putting down his rebellion in Paris, there was only
one man that Napoleon thought of as his adversary. His
rival would be the undisputed star of the French military,
the Black Count, the Angel of Death, a man whose
son would go on to write stories still celebrated in
(05:21):
the canon of literature, but whose own name would make
a mark on the world. The man Napoleon feared Toma
Alexandra Duma Davy. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood.
(05:43):
Flashback to seventeen eighty nine years before Napoleon put down
the pro royalist sympathizers in the streets, the bloody French
Revolution and equally bloody bred Riot had already made Paris
a place of chaos. Toma Alexander Duma, a young private,
and his unit had been called to the hunting town
(06:06):
of Ville Coterret, a few hours outside of Paris to
keep the peace there in case the violence spread. As
the town had no barracks, the soldiers stayed among the people,
and Duma was personally invited by a man named Claude
Lebret to stay at his inn and even to dine
with his family. That night. At dinner, Duma sang for
(06:29):
his supper, so to speak, charming the Lebret with stories
from his youth spent in a sugar colony in what
is now Haiti, telling the tale of how his father,
the son of a marquis, had briefly sold Alex into
slavery in order to afford passage for both of them
back to France, and how when they arrived, his father
(06:53):
had enrolled him in the finest school in the city,
where Alex learned how to ride and duel. He actually
learned the dueling from the greatest swordsman in France, the
Chevalier de Saint George, who we covered in a two
part episode in June. The Chevalier was also an accomplished violinist,
(07:13):
and perhaps it was he the Chevalier, who confirmed in
the young Alex Dumas's mind the notion that anyone of
any color could aspire to greatness in whatever endeavor they chose.
Because Toma Alexander Dumat was black, he had been born
to an enslaved woman that his father had owned as property.
(07:37):
Before Dumas's father left the French colony where Alex was born,
he sold Alex's mother and Alex's siblings. I think it's
important to stop and think for a minute here about
that cruelty, that dehumanization. It was only Alex who was
brought back to France. Alexander was temporarily sold into slavery
(07:59):
himself for his father to pay for that passage. When
Alex arrived, his father repurchased him and then officially freed him.
Given the unique opportunity presented to him, Duma was able
to spend the early part of his twenties as a
Parisian socialite. But when his father married their housekeeper and
(08:22):
cut off his allowance, alex did what all young men
of his station did joined the military. Typically well to
do boys with noble pedigree would have been able to
enlist as officers, but for Duma, the color of his
skin made that a little challenging. There weren't rules against it, really,
(08:43):
but it was a no man's land, and it would
have been hard for Duma to receive the position he
was entitled to. Screw it, he thought, he enlisted in
the Queen's dragoons as a mere private. Dumas's father was
infuriated and war that he wouldn't let his son drag
their family name Davy through the mud. Fine alex reasoned,
(09:08):
I'll take my mother's surname, and so he dropped his
father's last name Davy and became a Duma. Particularly taken
with Alexander's stories at the La Beret's dinner table was
the innkeeper's pretty daughter, Marie Louise. She wrote to a
friend the night that she first met Duma, he is
(09:30):
a fine figure of a man. The fact that she
was white and he was black, well by Rachel, was
for Marie Louise and her family no issue at all.
That Alex's mother had been enslaved wasn't a knock on
his character, and it actually explained much of his committed
zeal to the French Revolution. To zoom out a little bit,
(09:53):
this was a very complex time for race relations in France.
Revolutionary idea deals at the time were challenging long held
assumptions about equality, or rather inequality. Those of mixed race,
like Duma, were actually considered a unique class, separate from
both whites and blacks. Many were rich, some even owned
(10:19):
their own slaves. There was then, as today, widespread racism,
and the ever changing government occasionally passed laws to limit
the rights of non white people, dictating what they could
wear and what names and titles they could use. Laws
like these spoke to an attitude of supremacy, but did
(10:42):
not in themselves make life considerably harder for free non
white people. They simply wore other clothes. There were more
pernicious laws, like an attempt to round up and register
all non white people in France, but the government was
far to disorganize to ever actually follow through on the plan.
(11:04):
In some circles, it was actually considered fashionable to be
not quite white. A quote exotic heritage made you more interesting,
and even the most hardened racists in France liked to
see Duma as an quote exception. It was simply an
(11:26):
accepted fact. He was the strongest soldier in the army.
Legend had it he could hang from a ceiling beam
and lift a horse with his legs. Would anyone dare
to make a belittling remark to the man who won
three duels in a single day at six foot one
in an era when the average height for a man
(11:48):
was five foot eight. Alex Dumas cut a very imposing figure,
and he became the sort of Chuck Norris character of
the French army. To Marie Louise, the innkeeper's daughter, and
to others, he was quite literally, tall, dark and handsome,
and she was thrilled when her father agreed to an engagement.
(12:13):
But like any protective dad, the innkeeper wanted to know
that his daughter would be taken care of and told
Duma that they couldn't wed until he had risen to
the rank of sergeant. In the fall of seventeen ninety two,
Duma returned from the front lines to claim his bride.
But he was no sergeant. He was a war hero
(12:34):
and lieutenant colonel of an entire unit of men like himself,
known as the Black Legion. Duma was a shooting star
in the military, and soon the government was assigning him
a series of herculean challenges. It's almost comical how he
was dispatched to fix any problem that had stymied others.
(12:56):
Oh this Spanish fleet had defeated the last two generals
we sent in try Duma, and after that, would you
mind capturing Oh, I don't know the Alps, even though
you've never seen, let alone fought in the snow. By
the age of thirty two, he was equivalent to a
four star general. He would be the first person of
(13:17):
color to achieve the ranks of brigadier general, division general,
and General in chief. Duma was a ferocious soldier on
his own, once single handedly taking twelve enemies prisoner, but
much of his success could also be attributed to his
style as a leader. Armies in those days weren't particularly
(13:40):
well trained or organized. They often didn't have enough equipment,
and instead of being paid by their government, they just
stole from whatever place they were invading. Raping the local
women was another common occurrence. Duma was having none of
that isuted order and stability, and he was unfailingly fair
(14:04):
to citizens, earning him the somewhat derisive nickname mister Humanity.
In return for his men's loyalty, he advocated for them,
writing a letter after letter to Paris to secure payment, boots, rations,
and horses for his men. Not only was looting not allowed,
(14:25):
it wasn't necessary. There was seemingly no sealing on his career,
regardless of his race. In seventeen ninety four, France officially
abolished slavery throughout the Empire. Black and mixed race legislators
joined the governing body, the Council of the Five hundred.
(14:47):
The first integrated secondary school in Europe opened in Paris,
the National Colonial Institute, a world class academy educating both
children of the elite and scholarship students from the colonies.
But just as true greatness was seemingly within Dumas's grasp,
(15:08):
did the unstoppable force of his career run into the
immovable object of Napoleon Bonaparte. By seventeen ninety six, both
were generals. Napoleon was put in charge of the French
Army of Italy, and Dumas was assigned to work just
(15:29):
under him. The two men almost immediately did not like
each other. Dumas was one of the last officers to
arrive in Italy, and he was dismayed by what he saw.
Deference to Napoleon was based not on his admirable qualities,
but on the fact that he promised his ally's riches
(15:52):
Napoleon allowed looting, even arranged it and elevated it. His
soldiers didn't just steal food from the Italian towns they invaded,
they made the Italians cook feasts for them. Duma once
had to intervene to keep an entire towns women from
getting trapped on a bridge by soldiers where they would
(16:14):
have surely been assaulted. Under these circumstances, how could Duma
be expected to implement his more gentlemanly style of conduct.
The soldiers were in a position not unlike a kid
playing their parents off one another. Oh, Mommy, Alex says,
I can't pillage, well, Daddy, Napoleon said it was okay.
(16:37):
Napoleon took pillaging to a new and sophisticated level. He
made a project of identifying the most valuable treasures and
artworks from each region and shipped them back to France.
He brought experts on his expeditions just for that purpose.
He also charged Milan twenty million francs cash for having
(17:02):
been liberated from Austria, and he repeated that pattern everywhere
his army went. Duma did what he could to limit
Napoleon's damage, but if it was all in the service
of spreading the ideals of the French Revolution far and wide, well,
he'd mostly follow his orders. He played a pivotal role
(17:24):
in the Siege of Mantua and was understandably angry when
he found out that Napoleon's aid had written to the
general that Duma had stayed out of the action. Alex
composed his own letter explaining the situation to Napoleon. General,
I have learned that the jackass whose business it is
to report to you upon the Battle of the twenty seventh,
(17:47):
stated that I stayed in observation throughout that battle. I
don't wish any such observation on him, since he would
have shit in his pants. Saluta and brotherhood Alex do end.
Alex's reputation continued to grow. Taking small groups of soldiers
(18:07):
on strategic missions, Duma easily recognizable scared the living daylights
out of the Austrian army. They began to call him
d Schwartze Chuffel, or the black Devil. Just as Duma
was too smart to fight Napoleon directly, Napoleon was too
smart to let go of Duma. He praised his general's
(18:31):
victories and gave him the nickname the Horacious cocolos of
the Tyrol, as well as ordering him a new set
of pistols after he lost his In seventeen ninety seven,
Duma received a letter from his wife informing him that
their second daughter, a toddler named Louise, had died. He
(18:52):
went home to be with his family for a few
months before being called back into service once again to
serve Napoleon, as he had a tempted to conquer a
foreign land. But this time it wasn't Italy they were after,
and it wasn't that classic French enemy England either. No.
General Bonaparte was taking his men on a much more
(19:16):
perilous journey, and he wouldn't tell anybody where as if
to remind everyone of the pecking order, Napoleon installed himself
on a ship called the Orient, which was at the
time the largest on earth, and he put Duma on
(19:36):
the mid sized ship called William Tell. Because Napoleon could
not earn his men's respect as Duma had, he once
again tried to buy it, promising every soldier six acres
of land once they got to wherever they were going.
He didn't say, which must have made it hard to pack.
(19:58):
First stop, Malta, a Mediterranean island that had been ruled
by knights whose income came from their estates back in France.
When the French Revolution did away with feudal dues, the
richest Maltens suffered and weren't exactly friendly to the revolutionary
government's army that came knocking at their port. But Napoleon
(20:22):
had a plan. He promised to pay whatever price they
wanted once he and his fleet got inside the harbor,
and as a sweetener, the Grand Master could have a
principality in Germany. Why not. Once Napoleon's fleet was inside,
Napoleon gave the Maltens three days to get the hell out.
(20:44):
What he lacked in honor, he more than made up
for in savvy. In Malta, Dumas saw for the first
time when Napoleon would look like, not just as a leader,
but as a ruler. Napoleon declared declared religious freedom for all,
protecting Jews from persecution and abolishing torture. He freed two
(21:07):
thousand enslaved people and set about modernizing the infrastructure. He
planned hospitals, schools, post offices, and street lights. He instituted
rent control and passed into law the early version of
what would become the Napoleonic Code, and he made all
of these progressive changes without going through any kind of
(21:29):
red tape or bureaucracy or democracy. Napoleon was ruling like
a dictator. But there was no time for alex to
dwell too much on that, because Napoleon had finally revealed
what their final destination would be, Egypt. It had long
(21:49):
been Napoleon's ambition to conquer Egypt, as Alexander the Great
once did. The cities were ancient, even compared to Rome,
and they were believed to hold great treasures, not to
mention the incredible Pyramids, and it was in a highly
covetable strategic position, given Britain's reliance on trade with India.
(22:13):
Taking Egypt in the name of France and liberating its
people from the Mamelukes who controlled the region was a
grand and romantic notion. It was also, as everyone would
soon see, a pretty dumb idea. In the wee hours
of July second, four thousand frenchmen stepped ashore, led by
(22:38):
Napoleon and Dumont. Napoleon had put Duma in charge of
the cavalry. The problem was there wasn't much cavalry to
speak of the plan was to get most of their
horses once they arrived, but horses were hard to come by,
and it was one hundred and ten degrees outside quote unquote.
(23:01):
Liberating Italy had involved bloodshed, yes, but also feasting. There
was no feasting when the army showed up to seize Alexandria.
The citizens weren't particularly happy to see them, and the
soldiers kept getting attacked by Bedouin tribes. Napoleon's army took
(23:23):
Alexandria easily enough, but there was no reward, just the
prospect of a long, very hot march to Cairo. To
call it a suicide mission is both insensitive and correct.
The men were in dark wool uniforms carrying forty pound packs.
(23:48):
They were starving, and so so thirsty that many preferred
a bullet to the long, slow agony that had taken
their brothers. They were marching alongside. If a man became
weak and fell behind, he would be picked off by
a Bedouin tribe. Many men caught an eye infection that
(24:11):
burned and hussed and rendered them partially blind. Others suffered dysentery.
At the smaller cities they stopped at soldiers standing guard
had their throats slit in the night, not by an
enemy army, but by the very citizens they'd assumed would
greet them with cheers as liberators. It was clear whose
(24:35):
mistake this was. The man who decided to surprise the
enemy by attacking in the summer, the man who hadn't
made any arrangements for a way to carry water around Napoleon,
and who wanted to conquer six acres of desert anyway.
(24:55):
But they were either too loyal or too tired to mutiny,
so onward they marched. But Duma always had the energy
to take Napoleon down a peg. One night, he scrounged
up a few of these delicious novel fruits they called watermelons,
and he invited the other generals back to his tent
(25:17):
for a chet. They kicked around the question of why
they were even there, what their commander's plan even was.
Was Napoleon doing his best with an impossible task, or
at Paris used this as an excuse to get rid
of him once they reached Cairo, Should they the other
(25:38):
generals make a plan to stop One of Napoleon's informants
overheard the chatter. These men who doubted their leader, who
would refuse to march past their next destination. There's a
word for that in the military coup. Things came to
(26:00):
a head after the French finally took Cairo. Napoleon confronted
Duma about what he'd heard, making it clear that he
wouldn't tolerate criticism or questioning from anyone, even a fellow general.
War makes strange bedfellows. Until this point, the two men
(26:20):
had been fair weather friends. They were always in a
kind of cold war, but put their differences aside for
the sake of their missions, and when things were good,
they even got along. Napoleon's wife, Josephine, who was white
but had herself been born in the French colony of Martinique,
(26:40):
genuinely liked Duma. If either she or Dumas's wife, Marie
Louise ever had a boy, both families had promised to
be godparents to the other's son, and, whether begrudgingly or not,
Napoleon had praised Dumas's skill on the battlefield, which Duma
perhaps naively took to heart. But the bright Egyptian sun
(27:05):
shed a new light on their fundamental incompatibilities. Napoleon resented
Duma everywhere they went. The Egyptians marveled at the sight
of a black man leading a white army, and he
was so tall and imposing, they just assumed he was
in charge. When Duma put down an uprising by riding
(27:29):
into a mosque, rebels screamed, the Angel, the Angel. They
thought he was the angel of death. You can imagine
how little Napoleon liked that. Even if the whole Napoleon
complex insecure about being short is an English bit of propaganda,
(27:49):
I'm sure he didn't love everyone praising this tall, handsome,
gallant soldier. Actually, you don't have to imagine how Napoleon felt,
because years later Napoleon commissioned a painting of this incident,
and he replaced Duma in the painting with a nameless
white cavalry man. In another painting, it was Napoleon himself
(28:14):
who saved the day during that rebellion. Here we have
to wonder how much of Napoleon's antipathy towards Duma was racial.
It's likely Napoleon would have hated anyone of any color
who was as impressive a rival as Duma, but to
ignore race would be completely naive. If Duma had been white,
(28:38):
perhaps Napoleon would have tried harder to recruit him as
an ally. How did Duma feel about Napoleon. In one
potentially revealing incident, Duma discovered a stash of treasure while
excavating a home that had apparently been abandoned. Since the
goods had no owner, he could have kept them for himself,
(29:02):
but he turned them over to Napoleon, writing quote, the
leopard cannot change his spots, nor can I change my
character and principles. As an honest man, I must concede
to you the fact of a treasure I have just discovered.
I abandon it to your disposition, reminding you only that
(29:22):
I am a father and without fortune. End quote. On
its surface, a straightforward thing to do, but I detect
two possibly passive, aggressive digs in that letter. One, he
reminded Napoleon that he was an honest man. They both
knew that Napoleon would have stashed the stuff if he
(29:43):
had been the one to find it. Second, he had
every right to note that as a dad, he needed money,
but Napoleon hadn't fathered any children at the time, so
it's possible that's another bit of a one up, and
we can pretty safely assume Duma was not a fan
of what Napoleon was doing with the enslaved population of Cairo,
(30:08):
which was nothing sure. Napoleon had liberated thousands in Malta,
but that had been a pragmatic decision on Napoleon's part
to bring the island into the fold of the French Revolution.
It hadn't been an ethical decision. Egypt was more of
an outpost, and the more hierarchical its society, the more
(30:31):
firmly Napoleon could establish himself at the top of it.
For Duma, the son of a slave who had briefly
been enslaved himself, it must have been maddening. At least,
the two men agreed on one thing. Duma should leave
Egypt as soon as possible. The two men would never
(30:53):
see or speak to each other again. Duma hopped aboard
a malten ship bound for home, but it was a leaky,
rickety thing, and when they hit a storm, Duma tossed
anything that weighed anything overboard, the horses he'd purchased, the
Arabian coffee that he'd planned to resell, all of their cannonballs,
(31:16):
all their food, water. It was just enough to get
them safely to the nearest port, which happened to be Toronto.
In Naples, Duma sent the governor a letter explaining their
situation and asking for assistance while they made the necessary
repairs and arrangements. The governor said, sure, come on in,
(31:40):
but if you don't mind a short quarantine, just in case,
so you don't spread disease. This was a common practice
at the time, and Duma thought nothing of it, But
then he had an experience that I think many of
us can relate to. What he thought would be a
short quarantine turned into two years, two years of life
(32:04):
ruining imprisonment. While Duma had been in Egypt, news that
the French army conquered Naples had reached his camp, and
so when his rickety ship had managed to dock there,
he had every reason to expect friendly faces on the shore.
What he didn't know is that a pro royalist faction
(32:26):
led by the Cardinal Fabrizio Rufo, had recently retaken control
of Naples. The group called themselves the Holy Faith Army,
and they had managed to overtake the revolutionary French government.
Almost everyone on Dumas's ship was allowed to return to
their home country after signing a pledge that they wouldn't
(32:48):
take up arms against the Holy Faith Army for two years.
But Duma and his fellow general, Jean Baptiste Moncourt, were
locked up with no real long term plan for what
was to become of them. The two generals slept on
beds of straw atop stone benches, and they had little
to eat or drink. They could meet up once a
(33:12):
day in an enclosed courtyard, but other than that they
had no one to talk to except the guards, who
mocked them. But in other ways things were sort of chivalrous.
Duma was allowed to keep all of the money he'd
brought with him, which he would use to pay for
food and other items throughout his imprisonment. At the start
(33:34):
he even had a servant, and they let him keep
a small goat he'd picked up in Egypt, I think
as a pet. Duma wrote again and again to the
cardinal asking for a meeting, but the only visitor he
got was a young man who introduced himself as Crown
Prince Francis, son of King Ferdinand the Fourth of the
(33:57):
Kingdom of Naples, ignoring Dumas's pleas for a meeting with
the French ambassador, the quote unquote crown Prince asked a
few questions about Egypt, and then left. He was actually
not a crown prince at all, but an impostor trying
to gather information to fight against the French. But although
(34:22):
he was a fake prince, he was actually a decent
military leader, at least decent enough to round up an army,
which he took north, where he was promptly captured by
the French. Well, great, now they could do a prisoner
swap and Duma could go home, except there had been
(34:42):
a miscommunication that fake prince hadn't actually been captured by
the French. He was killed, there was no chance of
a prisoner swap. Imagine the psychological torture Duma must have
been suffering. Every path to freedom to a twist and
a turn, then led to a dead end, and his
(35:04):
only visitor was a guy lying about his identity who
then seemed like he would be a getaway car and
then ended up being nothing at all. Dumas's mental and
physical help declined precipitously shortly after being locked up. He
suffered a quote strange paralysis in his face. A few
(35:27):
months after arriving, he was having a biscuit and a
glass of wine while taking a bath. When he doubled
over in pain, his servant found him a mobile sweating
in a pool of his own vomit. A doctor was summoned,
and when he arrived, the doctor looked so scared and
(35:48):
to Duma, so surprised to see that Duma was alive
that Duma immediately hit upon the idea that he had
been poisoned and the doctor was actually in on it.
Instead of listening to whatever remedies his maybe would be
killer prescribed, Dumas preferred the treatment of his friend Manscore,
(36:09):
who had also come to hell. He fed Duma olive
oil and lemon juice and gave him enema. After enema,
which was the treatment for parasites at the time, the
possibly murderous doctor would return to give Duma blisters and
ear injections that may be contributed to Dumas's partial deafness.
(36:32):
Later on, Dumas would claim in his recollections of this
period that the doctor tried to have a secret meeting
with him, but he was so weak and strained that
he never got a clear idea on what exactly the
conspiracy was. When the doctor dropped dead A few days later.
(36:53):
Dumas ascribed it to a cover up, and his pet
goat also died. Dumas's knew doctor was kind enough, but
Dumas still became half blind, half deaf and facial paralysis.
Remained scared and alone. He couldn't sleep and became weak,
(37:15):
later saying he suffered quote an abundant and continuous loss
of sperm, which maybe a euphemism or maybe just a
problem that he had. I don't know, but if there
was a conspiracy within the fortress, there was also definitely
a conspiracy without an underground society. Friends of the French
(37:39):
smuggled a medical textbook to Duma with the section on
poisonings underlined. This gesture of solidarity and the seeming confirmation
that he wasn't being crazy, bolstered his spirits. A few
nights later, the Friends of the French gave Duma another gift,
(38:00):
lowering a package into his cell on a string. Inside
the plain paper was bark containing the medicinal herb quinine
and possibly the best present you can give an imprisoned
frenchman a hunk of chocolate. Back in France, Dumas's wife,
Marie Louise was trying to find out why her husband
(38:23):
had seemingly disappeared into thin air. Alex had written her
that he was about to head home. Then she got
no more letters, and more importantly, no Alex. She wrote
to his fellow military leaders, the war ministry, and every
government official she could think of. Many of her pleas
(38:45):
got no response. When she did hear back, it was
with a cold, perfunctory we're looking into it and will
let you know when we know. She had no income
and no idea when she would see the father of
her child again. I imagine that she was going a
little crazy too. You would think that the French government
(39:08):
would be keen to get one of its most effective
generals back, but they were distracted by a series of
military defeats as other European nations formed an alliance against them.
All the progress Duma had made wiped away. Jews were
back in ghettos, republics dismantled in weeks, and once again
(39:33):
in the chaos opportunity. Napoleon's brother Joseph had maneuvered his
way to the top of politics as President of the
Council of the Five hundred. The older Buonaparte returned from
the desert with tales only of his successes. Together, the
brothers conspired to stage a good old fashioned coups de'tat
(39:59):
how handy that an intimidating general who would certainly have
opposed such a maneuver, was safely tucked away in a
Neapolitan fortress, out of sight, out of mind. Napoleon discovered
that he didn't need Duma to fight his battles with
other countries, and in fact, he preferred to be the
(40:20):
only star in the sky. Napoleon used his absolute power
to achieve goals that Duma would have opposed. Even more
strongly than Napoleon's despotism. He began to roll back the
tide of emancipation. Once in power, Napoleon aligned himself with
(40:41):
pro slavery groups, and while he wouldn't instate the practice
at home, he passed laws with the goal of bringing
slavery back in the French colonies. In eighteen o two,
he drew up a law stating quote beyond the Cape
of Good Hope, slavery would be continued in conformity with
the laws and regulations of before seventeen eighty nine, and
(41:04):
the trade of blacks on behalf of those above mentioned
colonies could begin again end quote self serving as ever,
Napoleon had previously used the threat of slavery to get
free blacks to fall in line under his rule. A
few years before he reinstated slavery, Napoleon had told the
(41:27):
people of Dumas's hometown, San do Ming quote remember brave Negroes,
that the French people alone recognize your liberty and your
equal rights. End quote. As Napoleon was crossing at the Alps,
the same mountains that Duma had once climbed, Duma found
(41:48):
out that once again his captors in Naples were trying
to kill him. Why if that were true, didn't they
just slit his throat is not a question that he
seems to have ever addressed. But he was sure that
his upcoming move to another fortress was secretly cover for
his murder. The night he was to be moved, the
(42:12):
prison governor burst into the prison with a pack of
armed men. He told Duma and Mascort to pack their things.
Duma said no. The governor drew his sword. Duma was weak,
he was a prisoner, he was unarmed, he was outnumbered,
but he was still alex. Duma and he never backed
(42:36):
down from a fight. He brandished his walking stick and
drew himself up to his full height. Miraculously, it worked
and the guards backed down, at least temporarily. He was
later moved to the other fortress, and news of his
(42:56):
standoff with the governor reached King Furdokand, who was appalled
at the insubordination and decreed that Duma and man's cork
would be kept in solitary confinement. But he gave that
order to a man named Biancei, who had a different
view of the events, and he found the walking stick
incident humorous and a little admirable, and he decided to
(43:21):
disregard his Majesty's note. By the turn of the nineteenth century,
the nations of Europe were lining up to cut deals
with Emperor Napoleon. One of Napoleon's generals, Mara, who had
served alongside Duma and knew what had happened to him,
negotiated a release of all French prisoners into Naples surrender.
(43:46):
In June eighteen oh one, Duma finally came home. He'd
somehow held on to a couple souvenirs from Egypt, which
he gave to his daughter Amy, now eight years old.
The reunion was joyous. Marie Louise was pregnant again in
a matter of months, But there were certain inescapable facts
(44:10):
that marred the homecoming. The first was Alex's health, which
would never fully recover. He was plagued by headaches and
tonightas in addition to the partial loss of vision and hearing.
And then there was the state of his family, bankrupt.
When he was well enough to ride again, Duma begged
(44:31):
to be given another command in the army. No one
would give him the time of day or even back
pay for all the time he'd been in prison. He
was promised half a million francs for his ordeal. He
would never see a penny of it. Finally, there was
what Napoleon had done to the country. A divided people
(44:52):
are more easily oppressed, and race was an easy enough
way to split everyone up, made interracial marriage illegal, and
expelled all non white people from his sham government. He
kicked the scholarship students out of the National Colonial Institute
(45:13):
and the school soon closed. All veterans of color were
banned from living in or around Paris. Duma had to
get special dispensation just to keep his house, but other
non white men who had served in the army were
not so lucky. But even if they were poor outcasts,
(45:34):
alex and Marie Louise had each other. They had their daughter,
and in July eighteen oh two, their son, Alexander. Father
and son adored each other, and though they only had
a few years together, Alexander would retain core memories of
his father. Duma was diagnosed with stomach cancer in eighteen
(45:57):
oh five and soon took to bed in constant pain.
He couldn't bear any noise or movement, but little Alexander
was allowed to visit alex Dumat died at the end
of February eighteen o six, though in some ways he
had been dead since Egypt, stripped of the freedom and
(46:20):
glory that had always defined him. But in another way,
perhaps Napoleon, in his indifference, did Duma one tiny favor
in keeping him out of the army during his final years.
In four decades, Duma had been a slave, an aristocrat,
a student, a commander, a hero, a prisoner. He had
(46:43):
seen every climate and many countries. Finally, after his release
from prison, because he wasn't granted command again, he finally
had time just to be a dad. After her husband died,
Marie Louise took a job in a tobacconist shop. While
she begged for the pension that she was rightfully owed
(47:06):
as a military widow, she'd never get it. She knew
very well why Napoleon hated her whole family. When one
general made the mistake of inquiring about the remaining dumases
to Napoleon, the Emperor apparently stamped his foot and yelled, quote,
(47:27):
I forbid you ever to speak to me of that man.
But fortune would have one more reversal. Yet Napoleon would
die in exile and be remembered as a despot. Marie
Louise would live long enough to see her son restore
the family to glory and fortune as a novelist. And
(47:50):
though racists in the literary community would seek to exclude
the author of the Count of Monte Cristo based on
his color, he never for a moment doubted his talent.
He was, after all, the son of Alex Duma. This
(48:18):
episode wouldn't have been possible without the incredible book by
Tom Rice, The Black Count, Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the
Real Count of Monte Cristo and if you were interested
in this episode, you should absolutely pick up a copy
of that book because it's fascinating. That's our story of
(48:38):
Toma Alexander Duma and his rise in the military and
running a foul of Napoleon. But keep listening after a
brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about
the cultural legacy of the French in Egypt. Is the
(49:04):
pen Mightier than the Sword? In July seventeen ninety nine,
Napoleon's Egypt expedition made its most lasting contribution to society.
But it wasn't military men like Napoleon or Duma who
led the way. It was Pierre Francois Bouchard, an army
engineer and a member of Napoleon's Arts and Sciences Society,
(49:29):
who had been recruited not for his prowess on the battlefield,
but for his cultural and scientific knowledge. Napoleon had brought
along a delegation of what were called savants, like the
art experts he had brought to Italy to identify the
most valuable paintings. These savants were supposed to impress and
(49:51):
educate the locals with their technology and collect important cultural
artifacts to bring back to Paris. They also establish the
Egyptian Scientific Institute, which still exists today and which was
the oldest European building in Egypt until it was partially
destroyed in the Arab Spring. But on this afternoon, Bouchard
(50:15):
was supervising a group of workers as they tore down
a wall. While digging, his men encountered a rock too
heavy to move, and while a soldier might have simply
moved on, Bouchard took a closer look. It wasn't a boulder,
but a slab inscribed with hieroglyphics which no one on
(50:39):
earth could read, but also Greek, which Bouchard knew. And
what's more, part of the Greek texts explicitly stated that
its message was also written in hieroglyphics. In a very
real way, the discovery of what's now known as the
(50:59):
row Zetta Stone unlocked our understanding of ancient Egypt and
therefore the world. Is it too corny to say that
this text brought society closer together than any empire ever could.
The actual text of the stone, which now sits at
the British Museum, is about the king at the time
(51:22):
it was inscribed, Ptolemy the Fifth, and how he reduced
taxes and put down rebellions. Sounds like someone Duma and
Napoleon might have gotten along with or tried to kill.
Sometimes it's hard to tell with men like that. Noble
(51:54):
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
from Aaron. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me
Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
(52:18):
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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