Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (born March 25, 1762, Saint-Domingue [now Haiti]—died February 26, 1806, Villers-Cotterêts, France) was a French general during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

Dumas’s mother, Marie-Cessette Dumas, was a Black enslaved woman. His father, Alexandre-Antoine Davy, was a white Frenchman. Although later writers—including his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas—claimed Dumas’s parents were married, no supporting evidence exists. Thomas-Alexandre was raised on his father’s tobacco and coffee plantation in southwestern Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), a French colony on the island of Hispaniola. In 1776, at age 14, he traveled to France to live with his father, who had left Saint-Domingue the year before. They settled at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where his father assumed the family title of marquis de la Pailleterie. Dumas’s upbringing was typical of a son of an aristocrat, and in 1786, at age 24, he joined the French army as a private. However, his father refused to allow him to use his name in the lowest rank of the army. Thus, he dropped Thomas from his given name and took his mother’s surname, entering Louis XVI’s service as Alexandre Dumas.

Dumas was a corporal in 1792 when France went to war with Austria and Prussia. He had gained a reputation in the army for his strength, swordsmanship, and a volatile temper. He enthusiastically supported the First Republic established during the Revolution. When the Black Legion was formed in 1792 by Joseph Boulogne, chevalier de Saint-Georges, Dumas was promoted to lieutenant colonel and became second in command of the legion. Saint George—who had been born on Guadeloupe and, like Dumas, was of mixed ethnicity—had little interest in the army and left Dumas to organize, train, and command the legion. The Black Legion was fighting with the Army of the North when Dumas was promoted to general of brigade in 1793. He had risen from corporal to general unusually quickly.

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In 1793 Dumas was given command of the Army of the Alps, and in 1794 he captured two important mountain passes: the Little Saint Bernard Pass and the Col du Mont Cenis. Denounced that year by the local Jacobin Club, he was recalled to Paris to defend himself, but the coup d’état of 9 Thermidor (July 27) put an end to the Reign of Terror and the charges brought against him. He then briefly served with the Army of the West.

Dumas was given leave in December 1794 to recover his health at Villers-Cotterêts, his adopted hometown in France. Fit for service in 1796, Dumas was ordered back to the Army of the Alps, not as its commander but as second in command under Gen. François-Christophe Kellermann. Unhappy, Dumas requested a transfer. In October 1796, he was sent to Italy to serve under Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte; he fought under Bonaparte until the Treaty of Campo Formio, the peace settlement signed in October 1797 that followed France’s victory over Austria.

When Bonaparte led an expedition to Egypt in 1798, Dumas was given command of the cavalry. But again he pleaded poor health and was permitted to leave Egypt in February 1799. When his ship proved to be unseaworthy and put into the Italian city of Taranto, Dumas became a prisoner of war. Freed in April 1801, he returned to Villers-Cotterêts to regain his health. He was retired from the army in 1802.