All For One

I love The Three Musketeers.

That is to say, I love the classic novel The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas. And, if you've read or seen any version of the story, you'll know that the book is actually about four Musketeers. There's the experienced trio of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But there's also the headstrong, determined, quixotic D'Artagnan, who has just left home and family and is on a quest to join the Musketeers.

D'Artagnan first meets his future friends when he makes it to Paris and promptly manages to insult three different people in the space of a few minutes. Each man challenges D'Artagnan to a duel, and D'Artagnan, never one to back down from a challenge (his father told him not to!), schedules the duels back-to-back-to-back. When he arrives at the meeting place for Duel #1, he quickly realizes that the three men he's fighting in turn are all friends -- and that, moreso, they are all Musketeers.

The duels never take place; the four of them become too busy fighting off the Guards of Cardinal Richelieu (who have arrived to arrest them for illegal dueling). D'Artagnan may be young and rash, but he proves his bravery and honor when he assists the three Musketeers in overpowering the Guards. The trio decides to take D'Artagnan under their wings, and what follows is a high-rollicking adventure tale packed with action, intrigue, and broad, sweeping romance.

Dumas would go on to write two sequels to The Three Musketeers: Twenty Years After and Ten Years Later. (The third novel, Ten Years Later, is so lengthy that it's often published as three separate volumes: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask.) The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask remain the most-read works from Dumas's complete "D'Artagnan Romances" cycle, and have inspired numerous stage and film adaptations.

While the D'Artagnan Romances are, of course, historical fiction, it's interesting to note that they were historical fiction even at the time of their publication. The Musketeers' tales are all set in the seventeenth century, but Dumas himself was writing them in the nineteenth, with The Three Musketeers first appearing in serialized installments in 1843. That first novel was written by Alexandre Dumas and a collaborator, Auguste Maquet, a history teacher and fellow author (if one of less acclaim, by far, than Dumas, who was already a celebrated playright when he wrote Musketeers).

Dumas and Maquet did some homework for their tale, and the D'Artagnan Romances are based on a real-life figure. Charles de Baatz d'Artagnan, born in 1623, became the capitaine lieutenant of one of King Louis XIV's two Musketeer companies. He was a lifelong soldier who would go on to be appointed governor of Lille, and he died in battle in Hollan in 1673.

The Memoirs of Charles D'Artagnan were written by another real-life Musketeer (though not, unfortunately, by Charles D'Artagnan himself), and it was these memoirs that served as much of the inspiration for Dumas's novels. The other three Musketeers -- Athos, Porthos, and Aramis -- were also all real-life figures, who receive mention in the D'Artagnan memoirs. How much of these "memoirs" are factual is a matter of some debate, but what's certain is that both D'Artagnan and the Musketeers were figures who really existed.

The Musketeers themselves were formed by King Louis XIII of France, a combination of soldier and personal royal bodyguard. Louis armed his personal guards with a newly developed flintlock, muzzle-loading riffle -- the musket (hence the company's name). The Musketeers of history were variously disbanded and reassembled throughout the next two hundred years by various members of French royalty, before finally being permanently dissolved in the time of Napoleon.

A monument to the Four Musketeers in Southern France

Of course, in the end, the lasting appeal of D'Artagnan and the three Musketeers lies not in their factual history, but rather in what they've come to represent.

From the beginning, the Musketeers have had a glamorous appeal. King Louis XIII was something of a romantic, and he had a fondness for the by-gone days of chivalry. (It's what made him so reluctant to actually enforce any of those anti-dueling laws he kept enacting -- seeing as dueling itself was, in theory at least, a method of "defending one's honor.") The Musketeers themselves were career soldiers who did not include noble blood as an entry requirement to their ranks; you became a Musketeer through your own actions and merits, not by merit of your birth.

Dumas himself seemed entranced by the romantic chivalry of the Musketeers, writing about them two hundred years after their real-life creation. Audiences since then have responded to his books in kind, taking the stories to heart for their action, adventure, and chivalry.

Even in medieval times (where we think of the concept originating), chivalry was generally far more of a theory than a practice. There wasn't much more of it in the seventeenth century. So rather than harkening back to a better, nobler past, D'Artagnan and his friends represent a world of bravery, courtesy, and honor that's never really existed outside the pages of a book.

Or, at least, one that has not existed yet. It's true that the fun and adventure of Dumas's Musketeer tales is undoubtably a primary reason for the stories' staying power. And yet, the ability of story to inspire should never be overlooked. People would not keep reading these books if they did not see some appeal in the ideals of courage, honor, and friendship that Dumas wove throughout his stories. Hopefully, that appeal will prove inspirational to Dumas's readers. The honorable world of the Musketeers may not be in our past -- but perhaps it may be in our future.

Alexandre Dumas, born on July 24, 1802

From the Catalog:

-- The Three Musketeers
-- Twenty Years After
-- Ten Years Later
* The Vicomte de Bragelonne
* Louise de la Valliere
* The Man in the Iron Mask

-- All books by Alexandre Dumas
-- Film adaptations of The Three Musketeers
-- Film adaptations of The Man in the Iron Mask


(non-fiction)

-- D'Artagnan, The Ultimate Musketeer: A Biography by Geoffrey F. Hall and Joan Sanders.
-- Éminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France by Jean-Vincent Blanchard.
-- Books on King Louis XIII
-- Books on King Louis XIV



-- Post by Ms. B