Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
Portrait by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, c. 1797
Thomas-Alexandre
Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (French: [tɔmɑ alɛksɑ̃dʁ
dymɑ davi də la pajət(ə)ʁi]; known as Alexandre Dumas; 25 March 1762
– 26 February 1806) was a Creole general, from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in Revolutionary France. Along with his French contemporary Joseph Serrant, Toussaint Louverture in Saint-Domingue and Abram
Petrovich Gannibal in Imperial Russia, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is notable as a man of
African descent (in Dumas's case, through his mother) leading European troops
as a general officer.[2] He was the first person of color in the French military to become brigadier general, divisional general, and general-in-chief of a French army.[3]
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, a slave 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.[4] His father helped him enter the French military.
Dumas played a large role in the French
Revolutionary Wars.
Entering the military in 1786 as a private at age 24, he commanded 53,000
troops as the General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps by age 31. 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).[5] in 1797. The French—notably Napoleon—nicknamed
him "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol"[6] (after a hero who had saved ancient Rome[7]) 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 Expédition d’Égypte 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.[8]
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This article is about the French general and father of
the writer Alexandre Dumas (père).
For other uses, see Alexandre
Dumas (disambiguation).
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