Memorable World History/Authors

Alexander Dumas

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (French: [tɔma alɛksɑ̃dʁ dyma davi də la pajətʁi]; also known as Alexandre Dumas; 25 March 1762 – 26 February 1806) was a French general in Revolutionary France. With Toussaint Louverture and later Abram Petrovich Gannibal in Imperial Russia, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas stands as one of the highest-ranking men of African descent (his father being white, and his mother black) ever to lead a European army. He was the first person of color in the French military to become brigadier general, the first to become divisional general, and the first to become general-in-chief of a French army. Dumas and Toussaint Louverture (appointed a general-in-chief in 1797) were the two highest-ranking officers of sub-Saharan African descent in the Western world until 1975, when "Chappie" James achieved the equivalent rank of four-star general in the United States Air Force.

Born in Saint-Domingue, Thomas-Alexandre was the son of the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a white French nobleman and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved woman of African descent. He was born into slavery because of his mother's status but was also born into nobility because of his father's. His father took the boy with him to France in 1776 and had him educated. Slavery had been illegal in metropolitan France since 1315 and thus any slave would be freed de facto by being in the country. His father helped Thomas-Alexandre enter the French military.

Dumas played a pivotal role in the French Revolutionary Wars. Entering the military as a private at age 24, Dumas rose by age 31 to command 53,000 troops as the General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps. Dumas's strategic victory in opening the high Alps passes enabled the French to initiate their Second Italian Campaign against the Austrian Empire. During the battles in Italy, Austrian troops nicknamed Dumas the Schwarzer Teufel ("Black Devil," Diable Noir in French). The French—notably Napoleon—nicknamed him "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol" (after a hero who had saved ancient Rome) for single-handedly defeating a squadron of enemy troops at a bridge over the Eisack River in Clausen (today Klausen, or Chiusa, Italy).

Dumas served as commander of the French cavalry forces on the Expédition d'Égypte, a failed French attempt to conquer Egypt and the Levant. On the march from Alexandria to Cairo, he clashed verbally with the Expedition's supreme commander Napoleon Bonaparte, under whom he had served in the Italian campaigns. In March 1799, Dumas left Egypt on an unsound vessel, which was forced to put aground in the southern Italian Kingdom of Naples, where he was taken prisoner and thrown into a dungeon. He languished there until the spring of 1801.

Returning to France after his release, he and his wife had a son, Alexandre Dumas, who became one of France's most widely read authors of all time. Alexandre Dumas Junior's most famous characters were inspired by his father's life. The general's grandson, Alexandre Dumas, fils, would become one of France's most celebrated playwrights of the second half of the nineteenth century. Another grandson, Henry Bauër [fr], who was never recognized by the novelist Dumas, was a prominent left-leaning theater critic in the same period. The General's great-grandson, Gérard Bauër [fr], son of Henry Bauër, was also an accomplished writer in the twentieth century. A great-great-grandson, Alexandre Lippmann (grandson of the playwright Dumas fils), was a two-time gold medalist in fencing at the 1908 and 1924 Olympic games (he won silver in 1920).

Ancestry

Born 25 March 1762 in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (today Haiti), Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie was the son of a French nobleman, the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie (Antoine) (20 June 1714, Belleville-en-Caux–15 June 1786, Saint-Germain-en-Laye) and Marie-Cessette Dumas (birth date unknown; d. 1772, La Guinodée, Saint-Domingue), an enslaved African woman he owned.

Father

Noble pedigree

Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, born 1714, was the oldest of three sons of the Marquis Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie (1674 – 25 December 1758) and Jeanne-Françoise Paultre (or Pautre) de Dominon (died 1757). The Davy de la Pailleteries were provincial Norman aristocrats whose wealth was in decline. The family had acquired the title of "lords" (seigneurs) by 1632. The French kingdom granted the title "marquis" to the family by 1708.