Tom Reiss - The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

In the early 1800s, General Alex Dumas was purposefully disappeared by his enemies. And though his son sought to make him live through his classic novels, for too long his story has remained silenced. The Black Count vividly vindicates the great general, restoring him to his rightful place at the center of the Age of Revolution. Carrying us from the plantations of the Caribbean to Paris, the Alps, and Egypt, Reiss tells an engrossing tale of a life of social struggle, adventure, and courageand of the frustrations and joys of a researcher on the trail of a forgotten truth.

Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

The real-life history of General Alex Dumas is as poignant and swashbuckling a tale as any his novelist son could have dreamed. Tom Reiss has the dramatists sense of setting and scene, the reporters persistence, and the historians eye for truth. Would that the imprisoned Count of Monte Cristo had a copy of this book!

Darrin M. McMahon, author of Enemies of the Enlightenment and Happiness: A History

Tom Reiss can do it all: gather startling research and write inspired prose; find lifes great stories and then tell them with real brilliance. In The Black Count, the master journalist-storyteller opens the door to the truth behind one of literatures most exciting stories and opens it wide enough to show the delicate beauty of the lives within.

Darin Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng

The Black Countis a complex work of political and social history gallantly masquerading as a fantastic adventure story. As he did in The Orientalist, Tom Reiss has traveled far to stalk a forgotten legend, and has recovered for us a vivid, dramatic tale that delights, moves, and inspires.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction

TheBlack Countis totally thrillinga fascinating, beautifully written, and deeply researched biography that brings to life one of historys great forgotten characters: the swashbuckling, flamboyant, and romantic mulatto count whose true life belongs in a Hollywood movie or Alexandre Dumas story.

Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography and Young Stalin

Tom Reiss tells this amazing story, largely unknown today, with verve, style, and a nonpareil command of detail.

Luc Sante, author of Low Life, Evidence, and The Factory of Facts

We believe we know the glories of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. We believe we understand the horror of slavery and the oppression of Africans. But what is the relationship between the grand goal of liberation and the deep tragedy of racism? As Reiss shows us, answers can be found in the extraordinary life of a forgotten French hero of the great revolutionary campaignsa hero who was black.

Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands and The Red Prince

Tom Reiss tells the incredible story of Alex Dumas with the same excitement about uncovering history that he brought toThe Orientalist.

Nina Burleigh, New York Times bestselling author of Mirage: Napoleons Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt

Reiss combines the talent of a thorough English detective with the literary flair of a French novelist to produce a story that is as fresh as todays headlines but as old as the Greek classics.

Jack Weatherford, New York Times bestselling author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Colorful and utterly captivating This is history that is vibrant, gripping, and tragic.

William Dietrich, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Napoleons Pyramids and The Emerald Storm

Copyright 2012 by Tom Reiss

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reiss, Tom.
The Black Count : glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo / Tom Reiss.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Dumas, Thomas Alexandre, 17621806. 2. GeneralsFranceBiography. 3. FranceBiography. 4. FranceHistory, Military17891815. 5. Dumas, Alexandre, 18021870Family. I. Title.
DC146.D83R46 2012
944.04092dc23
[B] 2012017633
eISBN: 978-0-307-95295-0

Maps by David Lindroth Inc.

Jacket design by Eric White
Jacket illustration by Sam Weber

v3.1

For Diana and Lucy,
who know what it means to wait and hope,
and Melanie,
who knows why they blew up the bridge.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE, PART 1

I T was nearly midnight on the night of February 26, 1806, and Alexandre Dumas, the future author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, was asleep at his uncles house. He was not yet four years old. He was staying there because his father was gravely ill and his mother thought it best for him not to be at home. As the clock struck, he was awakened by a loud knock. By the light of a lamp that burned by the bedside, he saw his cousin sit up, visibly frightened. Alexandre got out of bed. He recalled in his memoirs, forty-some years later:

My cousin called to me, Where are you going?

Youll see, I replied quietly. Im going to open the door for Daddy, whos coming to say goodbye.

The poor girl jumped out of bed, greatly alarmed, grabbed me as I put my hand on the doorknob, and forced me back to bed.

I struggled in her arms, shouting with all my strength:

Goodbye, Daddy! Goodbye, Daddy!

The next morning the adults came to wake the children, and one of them told Alexandre the news that his father had died during the night.