Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
French general
Died when: 43 years 338 days (527 months)Star Sign: Aries
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (French: [t?m? al?ks?~d? dym? davi d? la paj?t(?)?i]; 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.
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.
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.
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). in 1797.The French—notably Napoleon—nicknamed him "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol" (after a hero who had saved ancient Rome) 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.
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