The Black Count Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo

I first heard about this book from a coworker of mine. He read it several years ago and had nothing but good things to say about it. I've had it on the backburner ever since, fully intending to get to it at some point but just never managing to. This month, however, a group of fellow book friends decided to give it a shot, and I tagged along. I'm....mostly satisfied with my experience with this book! Going into it, I had previously read The Count of Monte Cristo last year and I knew very little of French history. The entire Dumas family was super interesting to read about, with the whole take on slave ownership being turned on its head for large parts of the book. They had some progressive ideas in the beginning, even if they didn't always follow through on them. Alex Dumas was an accomplished military man, no question about it, and his dedication to a country that didn't always have his back was commendable. I'm not huge on military history, I'll just address that now. I honestly had to force myself through large parts of the middle of the book about military logistics and who was sending letters to whom and where troops were going. Large parts of the book didn't even mention connections to Dumas-any Dumas-and while I thought the historical aspects were interesting, it felt disconnected and boring in places. The author clearly did the research though, and the footnotes and asides he throws in about random details were entertaining. Almost a third of the final part of the book is nothing but bibliography and end notes, though, which surprised me a bit when the book ended much earlier than I was expecting. This was still an entertaining read, I just wish it were a bit more focused.

Having just finished The Count of Monte Cristo, I really wanted to like this book. But I just couldn't. The author has some very thin material as sources for his main subject, so fills out the rest of the book with information about the time in which Alex Dumas lived. Unfortunately, I can't trust the author due to a combination of inaccuracies, unsupported opinions expressed as facts, and incomplete readings of contemporary authors. One example: he states without any supporting evidence that, "France had long been known as the first Christian country in Europe." I can only ask, by whom? By people who don't consider Armenia, the first officially Christian country in the world in 301CE, a European country? (Geographically, this is an arguable point.) Or maybe by people who don't consider the Roman Empire, which converted to Christianity shortly after Constantine converted in 312 CE, a European country? If he's referring to the Merovingians in Gaul, they didn't appear as a major factor until the 5th century CE, and weren't Christian until after the conversion of Clovis I in 496 CE, over 150 years after the Roman Empire was officially Christian. He also tries to support his thesis that post-Revolutionary France was widely anti-slavery by quoting the first line from Rousseau's The Social Contract: “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains.” I think perhaps he didn't read much past the first sentence, as this quote has nothing whatsoever to do with literal racial slavery. Rousseau was talking about all people, who are born as free individuals in a natural state of freedom, but become subject to laws they had no part in creating or agreeing to. It speaks to the condition of all humanity, not just literally enslaved people. There are many more of these examples, but I won't go on. Between historical inaccuracies and incomplete readings of the material he quotes, this just isn't a history that should be trusted.

This is a fascinating portrait of an unduly forgotten hero of the French Revolution. In telling the story of General Dumas, Reiss goes all out in detailing the hopes and horrors of the revolution up to its co-opting by Napoleon. France's advances toward equality and the abolition of slavery--and later backsliding--are well-covered.

I have no idea how I did not know that the author of one of my most favorite books of all time, Les Miserables, (and another extreme favorite...The Count of Monte Cristo) was descended from an aristocrat and a slave as well as the eponymous "Black Count" who got the short shrift from Napoleon. (That explains SO much in Count of Monte Cristo.) I loved this book far more than I thought I would based on the cover. (Never judge a book by the cover, obviously.)

The Black Count is a rousing, tragic biography of a French Revolutionary general. Alexandre Dumas was also the father of another Dumas, the novelist, and grandfather of one more, the playwright. He was also black, living while black enslavement still powered a great deal of the world. Dumas (grand)senior hasn't been noticed much by history, and Tom Reiss sets out to correct that error. Overall, Reiss succeeds. Dumas is a compelling character, if hard to dive into -a fault not the author's, but due to the paucity of documentary evidence. Dumas is a very romantic character: very strong but felled quite young, marginal yet successful, a grand warrior yet sidelined by politics. He's a good foil for Napoleon, not least due to his comparative size. And the period, well, is always fascinating, and Reiss clearly appreciates it. Reiss also adds to our understanding of 18th-century and Napoleonic France. He draws attention to contradictory laws and attitudes, which either opened opportunities for black people or expelled them. He reminds us of the variety of ethnic and themed "legions" raised to complement the National Guard (133). Reiss brings Volney onto the stage several times, one of my favorite characters (historian, theorist, and author of one of the books Frankenstein's monster reads). We learn of the glory of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, and the tragedy of its recent demise (257). There's the ramshackle reactionary state of the Kingdom of Naples, led by the barely reigning yet ever-returning Ferdinand IV and powered by the Holy Faith army. There are black revolutionaries, like Louis Delgrès. Reiss also has an appreciative eye for contemporary prose in its bureaucratic waffling and soaring sentences. For an example of the latter, Your efforts will be all the more precious since love of Liberty and Equality must be a terrible and invincible passion in the children of those who, under their burning sun, have groaned in the irons of servitude; with so many men gathered to harry the despots and their slaves, it is impossible that France will not soon become the capital of the free world and the tomb of all the thrones of the Universe. (138-9) The Black Count finds such prose by plunging deep into documents, even those hidden in a safe needing to be cracked with uncertain legality (18-19). Reiss takes pains to make the physical nature of primary sources visible to the reader, and to explain archival arguments (for example, 181 footnote). However, there are two major flaws in The Black Count, at least in my reading. The first is a curiously conservative view of the French Revolution combined with strong hostility to Napoleon. Reiss sees the Republic going to war purely for plunder, downplaying actual threats and attacked from counterrevolutionary kingdoms. He views the revolutionaries as too rude or "antagonis[tic]" (146), seriously underrating both the ferocious ideological battles of the time as well as the real fears felt by crowned heads witnessing their most powerful sibling monarchy being overturned. Indeed, the revolutionaries seem like deluded psychopaths, bereft of the arguments they actually used to great effect. This view leads to some weirdly simplistic assertions. I say "weirdly" because Reiss is usually obsessed with details, from minutiae of policy wrangling to the details of clothing, cookery, and bad medical treatments. But in viewing the French Revolution he lets drop strange assertions like "with [the fall of Robespierre] the Terror ended" (176) - which completely misses the counterrevolutionary White Terror, not to mention the ability of every subsequence revolutionary government to ruthlessly crush opposition. Religion drops out as a major forces, which is flatly ahistorical. The French seizure of the pope happens offstage, a real mistake when trying to explain revolutionary politics! Without serious attention to religion one cannot understand the reactionary Vendee rebellion, where peasants demanded back their priests and king (and where Dumas commanded). Napoleon is clearly a leading villain in the novel, and it's not enough for Reiss to show the man growing suspicious of Dumas. Reiss also downplays Napoleon's successes and appeals. For example, he describes Napoleon's first battle victory in Egypt without mention of Napoleon's generalship; instead, the text focuses (appropriately) on infantry tactics and the Mameluke strategy, leaving Napoleon's plan and conduct off the page (245-7). Bonaparte emerges as a kind of clumsy Svengali, a cipher possessed of an unstable mind who mysteriously manages to ascend to power. We read of Napoleon's first consideration of a British invasion in 1797-8 (220), but not of the actual French attempt on Ireland in 1798. This can feed into Reiss' charges of Napoleon being delusional. Not including the Tone expedition fails to draw attention to the fact that many French generals failed, and Napoleon's years of triumph made him very appealing. I infer that these views are narrative ones, designed to make Dumas even more appealing. Napoleon is a villain dwarfed physically and morally by Dumas; that's a fine story. The French Revolution started in ending slavery, then turned more racist when led by demented psychopaths or corrupt politicians; Dumas appears saintly in contrast. This makes for enjoyable storytelling, but unfortunately skewed history. The dislike of the French Revolution could be a sign of conservative politics, of course. I don't know Reiss beyond this book, so I have no evidence beyond the text. And the text contradicts such a theory, naturally, given its passionate antiracism. Still, one can be antiracist and oppose policies which redistribute wealth and power along other axes, as this year's Democratic primaries in the United States show. And yet The Black Count is enjoyable. Reiss' prose is direct, his chapters well organized, his love of the period and biographical subject infectious. It's hard to leave the book without agreeing that yes, Alex Dumas was pretty awesome and badly handled. Recommended for those interested in the period and for anyone looking for fun historical nonfiction.