The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [317]
3. M. Anquetil’s history: Louis-Pierre Anquetil (1723–1806) published a four-volume Histoire de France in 1805; there were a number of later editions. Louis XIII, known as Louis the Just (1601–43), the son of Henri IV and Marie de Medicis, became king of France at the age of nine, following the assassination of his father. Anne d’Autriche (1601–66), daughter of the Spanish king Phillip III and sister of the king of Austria, was his queen, and in 1624 Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal and duc de Richelieu (1585–1642), one of the most important of French statesmen, became his prime minister. After the death of Louis XIII, Anne d’Autriche ruled during the minority of Louis XIV (1638–1715) with the help of Cardinal Giulio Mazarini, known as Mazarin (1602–61).
4. M. de Tréville: Arnaud-Jean du Peyrer (1598–1672), first comte de Troisvilles, or Tréville in his native Béarnais dialect, was born in Oloron in the Pyrenees. He was in fact a sublieutenant of the musketeers in 1625, when the novel begins; he became captain-lieutenant only in 1634. Dumas’s portrait of Tréville—his loyalty to the king, his opposition to Richelieu, and his protection of musketeers from the Béarn—is generally accurate. The real prototypes of Dumas’s three musketeers were all from the Béarn region: Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Auteville from the village of Athos, near Oloron; Isaac de Portau from Pau; Henry d’Aramitz from a place of the same name, also not far from Oloron. They bear virtually no resemblance to Dumas’s heroes and play only an insignificant part in Courtilz’s Mémoires.
5.installment: The Three Musketeers was first serialized in the magazine Le Siècle (“The Century”) from March 14 to July 14, 1844.
6.Paulin Paris: The scholar Paulin Paris (1800–81) was then working in the manuscript department of the Royal Library cataloging medieval French manuscripts. In his youth he had published, among other things, a thirteen-volume translation of the collected works of Byron. He was a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, mentioned by Dumas a little further on.
7.le comte de La Fère: The name and the memoirs are both Dumas’s invention.
8.French Academy: The Académie Française was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 for the purpose of establishing a dictionary of the French language. Its forty members (known as “immortals”) are chosen from the literary elite. Dumas made tentative approaches to the Académie at least three times between 1839 and 1841, but never presented himself as a candidate.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
1.Romance of the Rose: Le Roman de la Rose is a medieval French poem in two parts: a courtly love allegory composed by Guillaume de Lorris in the mid-thirteenth century, and a longer didactic treatise written some forty years later by Jean de Meung, known as “the thirteenth-century Voltaire.” A portion of it was translated into English by Geoffrey Chaucer. The town of Meung is on the Loire below Orléans.
2.La Rochelle: During the French wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century, the seaport of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast had become a Protestant (Huguenot, i.e., Calvinist) stronghold. The duc d’Anjou (later Henri III) laid siege to it in 1573, but was unable to take the town. In the siege of 1627–28, which Dumas makes an important part of his novel, Cardinal Richelieu finally triumphed over the stubborn resistance of the citizens.
3.the Spaniard: War was declared between Spain and France only in 1635, ten years after the beginning of the novel.
4.Béarnais patois: Henri IV (1553–1610) was born in Pau, capital of the Béarn in the Lower Pyrenees, the son of Antoine de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, and Jeanne III d’Albret, queen of Navarre.