The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [329]
156.maréchals de France: The title of maréchal de France was conferred on certain commanders-in-chief in honor of their victories. Its signum was a marshal’s baton.
157.Île de Loix: The Île de Loix, now a peninsula attached to the Île de Ré, was formerly connected to the island by a causeway (Dumas’s “passage”).
158.Saint-Simon: See note 40. Dumas exaggerates the numbers of English casualties and captured banners.
159.Montaigu: Walter (“Wat”) Montagu (sic), 1603?–77, had an adventurous life as a secret agent. He had been employed by the duke of Buckingham in the negotiations for the marriage of Charles I and Henrietta, was sent to Italy and Lorraine in 1627 to incite them against the French, was arrested in Lorraine and imprisoned in the Bastille. Freed shortly afterwards, he remained in France, converted to Catholicism in 1635, returned to England to propagate his new faith, was caught carrying letters from the French government to the king and queen of England, and in 1643 was sent to the Tower of London. He was released in 1647, expelled from England in 1649, and ended his days as abbot of the Benedictine monastery in Nanteuil.
160.Memoirs: A note in the Garnier edition confirms the accuracy of Dumas’s reference. Richelieu discusses this league in his Mémoires, vol. VIII, p. 2 (see note 58), basing himself in part on papers confiscated from Wat Montagu (see previous note).
161 the Red Dovecote: Le Colombier-Rouge was actually the name not of a tavern but of a village to the west of La Rochelle. It is mentioned on page 83 of the same volume of Richelieu’s Mémoires referred to in the previous note.
162.Bois-Robert…Beautru: François le Metel, sieur de Boisrobert (1592–1662), was a poet and a man of great wit who succeeded in pleasing Marie de Medicis, King Charles I of England (he accompanied Henrietta when she went to London), Pope Urban VIII (who gave him a benefice), and above all Cardinal Richelieu, whom he served as literary secretary. The idea of the Académie Française, of which he was one of the first members, may even have been suggested by him to Richelieu. Guillaume de Bautru (sic), comte de Serrant (1588–1665), diplomat and mediocre writer, was also devoted to Richelieu and later to Mazarin. He, too, was one of the first forty academicians.
163.the chevalier de Guise: François-Alexandre-Paris de Lorraine, chevalier de Guise, died in 1614, whereas the story of the Grand Mogul belongs to 1625 (Dumas gives a brief account of it in chapter II of Louis XIV et son siècle; see note 1).
164.the White Lady…: Dumas also tells of this legend in Louis XIV et son siècle. It was current well before the seventeenth century and persisted until at least the end of the eighteenth. There were similar legends in other royal families of Europe.
165.the stab of a knife…: The reference is to the assassination of Henri IV by Ravaillac in 1610, just as the king was preparing a military intervention against the Holy Roman Empire in defense of the German Protestants.
166.the Antichrist: See 1 John 2:18, Revelation 11:7, 19:19–21.
167.Jacques Clément: Jacques Clément (1567–89), a Dominican monk, assassinated Henri III in 1589 and was killed on the spot by the king’s guards.
168.Palais de Justice: Fire broke out in the Palais de Justice on March 5, 1618, destroying the main hall, a chapel, and some adjoining buildings. It is not known if it was an act of arson. The hall was rebuilt in 1622 by Salomon de Brosse, architect of the Luxembourg Palace.
169.Mlle de Montpensier: This should be Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (1627–93), who was known as la Grande Mademoiselle, but she was a year old at the time. Charles Samaran, in the Garnier edition, suggests that Dumas means Catherine-Marie de Lorraine (1552–96), who was duchesse de Montpensier by marriage and thus never Mlle de Monpensier, took part in the wars of the League (see note 11), and was rumored to have incited