Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

Divisional-General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (known before as Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, pronounced in ; 25 March 1762 – 26 February 1806) was a French Army officer who served in the French Revolutionary Wars. Along with fellow French officers Joseph Serrant and Toussaint Louverture, Abram Petrovich Gannibal from Imperial Russia and Władysław Franciszek Jabłonowski from Poland, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was noted as a man of African descent (in Dumas's case, through his mother) leading European troops as a general officer.Toussaint Louverture was commissioned as "general-in-chief" of the army in French Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution. Alfred-Amédée Dodds, who was of one-eighth African descent, became a general of division in 1898 and general-in-chief in 1900, but commanded only colonial troops. La Revue hebdomadaire, 2nd series, 4th year, v. 9, 4 August 1900, n.p., and in Mariani, Angelo and Uzanne, Joseph, eds., Figures contemporaines: Tirées de l'album Mariani v. 6 (Paris: H. Floury, 1901), n.p."Le Général Dodds". Abram Petrovich Gannibal had achieved major-general rank in the Imperial Russian Army by 1752. In continental Europe, however, Alexandre Dumas is the first general of division until the advent of Jean-Marc Vigilant another Black French general of division in the French Air and Space Force in the 2000s and the sole (nominated) general-in-chief in modern history. All four commanded as officers in the French Army and apart from Gannibal, who was only captain and engineer-sapper in the Army of Louis XV during his formative years, they all gained their general ranks in the French Army, about four decades after Gannibal had done the same in Russia. Yet Dumas was the first Black man in the French military to become brigade general, divisional general, and general-in-chief of a French army. Dumas was promoted to brigade general of the Army of the West on 30 July 1793, divisional general one month later, and was subsequently made general-in-chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees. Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), 145 and 147. The next black people to make brigadier general in the French military were Toussaint Louverture, André Rigaud, and Louis-Jacques Beauvais, all promoted to that rank on 23 July 1795. Madison Smartt Bell, Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 119. Note: Alexandre Dumas was the first French general of African descent, and was of mixed race; Louverture was the first French general of purely African descent. The assertion that Louverture was "the first black general in French history" is true if mixed-race men are not considered in this category, or if Dumas is overlooked. The claim has been made by Pierre Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture: Un révolutionnaire d'Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 554, quoted in Daniel Desormeaux, Deborah Jenson and Molly Krueger Enz, "The First of the (Black) Memorialists: Toussaint Louverture", Yale French Studies no: 107 (2005), 138.

Born in Saint-Domingue, Thomas-Alexandre was the son of Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and of Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved woman of African descent. He was born into slavery because of his mother's status, but his father took 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 France.Compare: Christopher L. Miller, The French Atlantic triangle: literature and culture of the slave trade. Duke University Press, 2008. p.20 - "But the moral and legal context in France was complex. Conditions of slavery and servitude were offset by what Sue Peabody calls the Freedom Principle: the notion, supported by a decree of Louis X in 1315, that 'France' signifies freedom and that any slave setting foot on what we now call the hexagon should be freed. There was a tradition of freeing slaves, and it remained influential, if often undercut, during the time of the Atlantic slave trade." His father helped him enter the French military.

Dumas played a large role in the French Revolutionary Wars. Having entered the military in 1786 at age 24 as a private, by age 31 he commanded 53,000 troops as the General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps. Dumas's victory in opening the high Alpine passes in 1794 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)Report by Dumas's aide-de-camp Dermoncourt, quoted in Alexandre Dumas, père, Mes mémoires, v. 1 (Paris, 1881), 110 in 1797. The French—notably Napoleon—nicknamed him "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol"Alexandre Dumas, père, Mes mémoires, v. 1 (Paris, 1881), 127. (after a hero who had saved ancient RomeTom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), 213.) for defeating a squadron of enemy troops at a bridge over the Eisack River in Clausen (today Klausen, or Chiusa, Italy) in March 1797.

Dumas participated in the French attempt to conquer Egypt and the Levant during the of 1798–1801 when he was a commander of the French cavalry forces. 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 run 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 (1802–1870), who would become one of France's most widely-read authors. The son's most famous literary characters were inspired by his father.Reiss (2012), The Black Count, pp. 12–14. See also Gilles Henry, Les Dumas: Le secret de Monte Cristo (Paris: France-Empire, 1999). A. Craig Bell argues for Porthos in Alexandre Dumas: A Biography and Study (London: Cassell and Co., 1950), 7.

Ancestry Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie was born on 25 March 1762 in Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) to French nobleman Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la PailleterieDeath certificate of Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 16 June 1786, Musée Alexandre Dumas (Villers-Cotterêts, France). and Marie-Cessette Dumas,Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), 54. an African woman he enslaved.

Father

Noble pedigree Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, born 1714, was the oldest of three sons of the Marquis Alexandre Davy de la PailleterieFernand Gaudu, "Les Davy de La Pailleterie, seigneurs de Bielleville-en-Caux, Rouen," Revue des Sociétés savantes de Haute-Normandie, no. 65 (1972), 44–45. and Jeanne-Françoise Paultre (or Pautre) de Dominon.Receipt, signed by Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, 29 June 1757, Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais (Dainville and Arras, France), 10J34. The Davy de la Pailleteries were provincial Norman aristocrats whose wealth was in decline.Reiss (2012), The Black Count, 24. The family had acquired the title of "lords" (seigneurs) by 1632.Fernand Gaudu, "Les Davy de La Pailleterie, seigneurs de Bielleville-en-Caux, Rouen," Revue des Sociétés savantes de Haute-Normandie, no. 65 (1972), 43. The French kingdom granted the title "marquis" to the family by 1708.Robert Landru, À propos d’Alexandre Dumas: Les aïeux, le général, le bailli, premiers amis (Vincennes: R. Landru, 1977), 22.

Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie ("Antoine") had two younger brothers, Charles Anne Édouard and Louis François Thérèse. All three were educated at a military school and pursued careers as officers in the French military. They first served during the War of the Polish Succession. Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, who reached the rank of colonel, saw action at the Siege of Philippsburg in 1734.

Career in Saint-Domingue In 1732, Antoine's younger brother Charles had been given a military posting in Saint-Domingue, a French colony in the Caribbean that generated high revenues from its sugarcane plantations, worked by African slave labour. In 1738, Charles left the military to become a sugar planter in that colony; he married Anne-Marie Tuffé, a rich local French Creole widow, and took over her estate.

That year Antoine also left the Army and joined his brother and sister-in-law in Saint-Domingue. He lived with them and worked at the plantation until 1748. In that year, the two brothers quarrelled violently, after which Antoine left Charles's plantation, taking his three personal slaves with him. At this point, Antoine broke off contact with his brother and his family for thirty years, although they both lived on the same small island.Count de Maulde’s request at the Parliament, 30 November 1778, Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais (Dainville and Arras, France), 10J35. Antoine made a living in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue, as a coffee and cacao planter, under the assumed name of "Antoine de l'Isle". At some point during these years, Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie purchased the slave woman Marie-Cessette "for an exorbitant price" and made her his concubine. In 1762, she gave birth to their mixed-race son Thomas-Alexandre. During her time with Antoine, she also bore him two or three daughters.

Antoine's mother, the Marquise Jeanne-Françoise, died in 1757 and his father, the Marquis Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, died in 1758. Charles (although younger than Antoine) returned to Normandy to claim the title of Marquis and the family château. The British blockade of French shipping during the Seven Years' War reduced Charles' income from sugar exports, so he tried to smuggle the commodity out of Saint-Domingue from his plantation. He used a wharf in the neutral border territory (and tiny island) of Monte Cristo (today Monte Christi, Dominican Republic). (Some historians argue that this island inspired Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), pp. 13–14 and 49; Gilles Henry, "Alexandre Dumas, Les dessous d'une légende: La véritable histoire de Monte-Cristo," Historia Magazine, (May 2002), 42–67.) Charles died of gout in 1773;Leroux to Maulde, 8 July 1773, Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais (Dainville and Arras, France), 10J26. Louis, the youngest of the Davy de la Pailleterie brothers, died three months later. He had served a 15-day sentence for being involved in selling defective weapons to the French military (a famous scandal at the time known as the Invalides Trial [le procès des Invalides]).Gilles Henry, Les Dumas: Le secret de Monte Cristo (Paris: France-Empire, 1999), 47. Two years after the death of both his younger brothers, Antoine returned to Europe.

Mother