Portrait of a Man BOURDON, Sébastien
In 2004, builders renovating a house in the Dutch city of Maastricht made a sensational discovery. In the garden near the wall of the building they found the remains of seven people. Police initially believed the burial was recent, but experts say the people lived around the 17th century. This is confirmed by several coins from the era found nearby.
Historians recalled that on June 25, 1673, battles took place in these parts - the French king Louis XIV sent a guard of musketeers to capture Maastricht. Its leader was none other than Lieutenant-Commander Charles de Batz de Castelmore, Count D'Artagnan. During one of the many assaults on Maastricht, D'Artagnan was killed - a musket bullet hit him in the head, his body was taken out from under enemy fire only the fifth time, and four daredevils who tried to do this died. From the memoirs of that time it is known that in the presence of two cousins of the deceased, Pierre and Joseph de Montesquiou d'Artagnan, the body of the captain of the musketeers was buried at the foot of the walls of Maastricht. So, perhaps, in a mass grave among other French soldiers rested a real one, and not a fictitious one Alexandre Dumas is a historical figure.
Portrait of d'Artagnan from the frontispiece of Courtille's Memoirs...
All researchers of Dumas’s work agree that, of more than a dozen people who bore the surname D’Artagnan, the prototype of the famous character is de Castelmore. It was to him, a desperate brave man, that the King of France gave “special” assignments.
Around 1640 (and not at the end of the 1620s, like Dumas), the young man signed up for royal service in the guard under his mother's surname - de Montesquiou. Then it was customary to have a military nickname, and he came up with the pseudonym d’Artagnan - after the name of the lands that belonged to his mother. He became a musketeer only in 1644. Then d’Artagnan joined the retinue of Cardinal Mazarin.
His most famous act is the arrest in 1664 of Superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, described in The Vicomte de Bragelonne. After he distinguished himself so much in the Fouquet affair, d'Artagnan becomes the king's confidant. Louis XIV was very saddened by the death of such a servant and said that he was “almost only person, who managed to make people love himself without doing anything for them that would oblige them to do so,” and according to d’Aligny, the king wrote to the queen: “Madame, I have lost d’Artagnan, to whom highest degree trusted and who was suitable for any service.” Marshal d'Estrade, who served under D'Artagnan for many years, later said: "Better Frenchmen are hard to find." This can be said about the literary hero Dumas. However, the novelist largely deviated from the historical truth. He took D'Artagnan several decades ago, during the reign of Louis XIII.
And our hero was born in 1611 in Castelmore Castle in the province of the Lower Pyrenees in the south of France. Bertrand de Batz, the father of the future musketeer, although he was a nobleman, was, in fact, never distinguished by wealth. His house was never an abode of luxury and bears little resemblance to those grandiose castles of the Loire Valley.
The Chateau d'Arricau-Bordes estate, unremarkable in terms of size or comfort, is valued by realtors at $5.3 million.
Such a high price for the current economic situation is due to the fact that the estate belonged to the family of Charles de Batz, who bore the surname d'Artagnan on his mother's side.
The estate is currently owned by British financier Robert Shetler-Jones. Land plot has an area of 14 hectares, on which there are forests, grape plantations and steppe landscapes. Also on the territory of Chateau d'Arricau-Bordes there is its own wine production, which supplies the estate owners with up to 4.5 thousand bottles of wine per year.
Painting by Alfred Friedlander Royal Musketeers under Louis XIII
It must be said that at first the musketeers were not the elite at all. The company at its formation consisted of 100 ordinary musketeers, 1 captain, 2 lieutenants and 4 cornets. Until 1629, the company was subordinate to the captain-lieutenant of the light cavalry, then it gained independence. Its first commander was Captain de Montale. From October 3, 1634, the king himself was considered the captain of the company, and its actual commander bore the rank of captain-lieutenant; this position was taken by M. de Treville (Jean-Armand de Peyre, lord, from 1643 Count de Troisville, otherwise de Treville).
Jean-Armand du Peyret, Comte de Treville
De Treville was a Gascon, with the result that a significant part of the company soon consisted of the commander's fellow countrymen. The distinctive sign of the musketeers was a short azure cloak “a la Cossack” with silver braid and white crosses sewn onto it on the front, back and side blades; the cross, made of velvet, had golden royal lilies at the ends and scarlet trefoils at the crosses. The musketeers were assigned a gray horse (more precisely, white or dapple gray), which is why they received the nickname “gray musketeers.” A musketeer's equipment, in addition to a horse and a musket with a bipod, consisted of a sword, a broadsword (for mounted combat), a pair of pistols, a daga (a dagger for the left hand) and a buffalo leather belt with cartridges attached to it (natruski), a powder flask, a bag for bullets and wicks ; The “Musketeers of the King’s Military House” were ranked among the “Guards outside the Louvre,” that is, the King’s external guard; they were supposed to accompany the king on his exits and walks, riding on horseback in twos in front of the other guards; They also accompanied the king on campaigns in which he took part.
Ernest Meissonier. A Game of Picket. 1845
The “real” Athos was not even thirteen years old in 1628 (the time of action of “The Three Musketeers”); Porthos was 11 years old, and Aramis was less than ten. But Dumas wanted to pit his heroes against Buckingham, and he changed the flow of time.
Athos
His real name is Armand de Silleg d'Athos d'Auteville. (1615-1643). Armand de Silleg also served in a musketeer company. He was a poor Gascon nobleman who was the second cousin of Armand-Jean de Treville. Young Silleg arrived in Paris around 1638. However, he did not join the musketeer company immediately, approximately three years later, in 1641. He did not wear the famous cloak for long. In 1643 Athos was killed in a duel near the market of Pré-aux-Claires.
The estate with the castle de La Fère belonged to Queen Anne of Austria and played a rather important strategic role in France during the Wars of Religion. The troops of Henry III recaptured this fortress from the Protestants several times. However, the de La Fer family itself ceased to exist by the beginning of the 17th century. Among the Knights of the Order of the Holy Spirit, established in 1580, one can find the surname de La Fère, but this worthy nobleman died almost thirty years before the birth of Athos.
Porthos
Isaac de Portau was born in 1617 into the family of a wealthy landowner. Porthos’s grandfather, an inveterate Huguenot, was a cook at the court of Henry of Navarre during his stay in Béarn; according to other sources about him, grandfather Porthos was an ordinary arquebusier, but the musketeer’s father was a notary and a successful landowner. Porthos is one of the few musketeers who came not from Gascony, but from nearby Béarn. Isaac entered the musketeer company at about the same time as Armand de Salleg. Who knows, perhaps Athos and Porthos were actually close friends. However, Isaac also served only briefly under Treville. The company itself was disbanded in 1646. However, Porthos remained in Paris for some time. He retired in 1650, and went back to Béarn. There he received the position of chief of the arsenal of the Navarran fortress.
Isaac de Porto lived in his native Béarn for a long time and, apparently, happy life. He died in 1712 at the age of 95. There is information that the prototype of Porthos left behind seven children. According to other sources, he was not married and died alone.
Aramis
Aramis, or rather Henri d'Aramitz, was born in 1620. He belonged to the old Béarn family, which became famous during the religious wars of the 16th century. Aramis, like Athos, was a relative of de Treville (his cousin)! In 1641 he joined a musketeer company, but ten years later he was already living in his native land with his wife, the former Mademoiselle de Béarn-Bonasse, with whom he had three sons.He died in 1672, according to other sources in 1674. According to unconfirmed reports, for some time he was a secular abbot.
For Gacienne de Sandre de Courtille, the author of “Memoirs of M. d'Artagnan, Lieutenant-Commander of the First Company of the Royal Musketeers,” these were not three friends, but three brothers whom d’Artagnan meets in M. de Treville’s house. “We admit, names alien to our ears struck us, and it immediately occurred to us that these were just pseudonyms under which d'Artagnan hid names, perhaps famous, unless the bearers of these nicknames chose them themselves on the day when, on a whim, out of annoyance or poverty, they put on a simple musketeer’s cloak,” writes Dumas in the author’s preface to “The Three Musketeers.”
Review of the black musketeers in the Sablon Valley. Painting by Robert Paul Ponce Antoine, 1729
What did Dumas' heroes get from them? Only names. But Dumas came, picked up names on the street - and created a mythology out of nothing. Anticipating, we note, not only and not so much adventure literature, but comics (and especially Japanese “manga”), in which the properties of the heroes acquire the features modern myth. I want to play Dumas' heroes, despite the cruelty of Athos, the naivety of Porthos and the cunning of Aramis. They can, because they are gods, not people.
And here’s what else is interesting: as a result of this fiction, this pseudo-historical manipulation, the very real historical France of the early 17th century comes to life before us with its events, people, customs, color, even cuisine: France, which we would never have known and loved so much , being forced to read only archival documents and “Memoirs of Messire d'Artagnan” by Courtille.
Monument to d'Artagnan in Paris
Visiting a fairy tale
Your favorite childhood book comes to life in your memory and you can even hear D’Artagnan’s spurs ringing on the pavement
"...So, d'Artagnan entered Paris on foot, carrying his bundle under his arm, and wandered the streets until he managed to rent a room suitable for his meager means. This room was a kind of attic and was located on the Rue Gravediggers, near Luxembourg."
Mogilshikov Street (now Servandoni Street)
Memorial plaque on the corner house of Buck Street and embankment
“On this place stood the house in which the captain of the royal
Musketeers Mr. D'Artagnan"
Bak street, 1. Captain-Lieutenant d'Artagnan once lived here
In this photo, the plaque is visible in the lower right corner. And even further to the right, a few steps from d'Artagnan's home, in houses 13-17 on Bac Street, there were musketeer barracks, where most of them received housing at the expense of the treasury. By the way, it was when d'Artagnan was captain of the musketeers that this happened (1670 .). Alas, the barracks have not survived to this day and the current houses No. 13, 15 and 17 do not differ in anything special except their historical location.
"... Having made a deposit, d'Artagnan immediately moved to his room and spent the rest of the day busy with work: trimming his camisole and trousers with galloon, which the mother ripped from the almost completely new camisole of Mr. d'Artagnan the father and slowly gave to her son. Then He went to the embankment of Zhelezny Lom and let a new blade be attached to his sword."
Zhelezny Lom Embankment (now Kozhevennaya)
"... After that, he went to the Louvre and asked the first musketeer he met where Mr. de Treville's house was located. It turned out that this house was located on the Old Dovecote Street, that is, very close to the place where d'Artagnan settled - a circumstance , interpreted by him as an omen of success."
Street of the Old DovecoteReception of Monsieur de Treville
"...In addition to the morning reception with the king and the cardinal, more than two hundred such “morning receptions” took place in Paris, which received special attention. Among them, the morning reception with de Treville gathered greatest number visitors. The courtyard of his mansion, located on Old Dovecote Street, resembled a camp from as early as six o’clock in the morning in the summer and from eight o’clock in the winter. About fifty or sixty musketeers, apparently replaced from time to time so that their number always remained impressive, constantly walked around the courtyard, armed to the teeth and ready for anything.
De Treville could well have had a house like this
Desho Carmelite Monastery
The courtyard of the Desho monastery, the site of the failed duel between d'Artagnan and Athos
Its name comes from the word “dechausse” - barefoot, as the nuns took off their shoes upon entering. All that remains of the “barren wastelands” is the monastery courtyard, where the duel was supposed to take place, which marked the beginning of the friendship of the four musketeers. It is quite possible that the paving stones in the yard are still “the same”, four centuries ago
"The young woman and her companion noticed that they were being followed and quickened their pace. D'Artagnan almost ran ahead of them and then, turning back, collided with them at the moment when they passed the statue of the Samaritan woman, illuminated by a lantern that cast light for this entire part of the bridge."
Samaritan Tower with Samaritan Woman. Fragment of a painting from the Carnavalet Museum
New Bridge and Samaritan Department Store
“Athos lived on Rue Ferou, a stone's throw from Luxembourg. He occupied two small rooms, neatly decorated, which were rented to him by the mistress of the house, not yet old and still very beautiful, who in vain turned her tender gaze on him.
Rue Ferou towards Saint-Sulpice. Athos lived in one of the local courtyards
Rue Ferou, view towards Luxembourg
“Porthos occupied a large and seemingly luxurious apartment on Old Dovecote Street. Every time, walking with one of his friends past his windows, at one of which there was always a Mousqueton in ceremonial livery, Porthos raised his head and, pointing his hand upward, said: “This is my abode.” But it was never possible to catch him at home, he never invited anyone to go upstairs with him, and no one could imagine what real wealth lay behind this luxurious appearance.”
Home for Porthos
Having reached the end of the alley, D'Artagnan turned left. The house where Aramis lived was located between Rue Casset and Rue Servandoni.
Vaugirard, 25 - Aramis's address
Not far from this house, at the intersection of Vaugirard and Rennes streets, there is a hotel named after Aramis
Louvre today
Model of the Bastille in the Carnavalet Museum
Bastille... Here it is, the fear of contemporaries, which the revolution of 1789 turned into a pile of stones. They then paved the Place de la Concorde: trample, trample the hated remains...
On the site where the Bastille stood
"Red Duke"
The Richelieu statue takes pride of place among 136 statues statesmen France decorating the Hotel de Ville
Monument to Alexandre Dumas the Father near the Malesherbes metro station
A. Maurois (“Three Dumas”) writes about the graphic artist, Gustave Doré, the author of the monument: “Gustave Doré was inspired by a dream Dumas the father once told to his son: “I dreamed that I was standing on the top rocky mountain, and each of its stones resembles one of my books." On top of a huge granite block - exactly the same as the one he saw in his dream, the bronze Dumas sits, smiling. At his feet sits a group: a student, a worker, a young girl, forever frozen with books in their hands.”
They erected a monument on Place Malesherbes, where the writer’s last apartment was located, and now you can see it directly from the exit of the metro station of the same name (M° Malesherbes - the name in French for those who want to find the station on the map of the Paris metro).
Youth
D'Artagnan was born at Castelmore Castle near Lupillac in Gascony. His father was the son of a tradesman turned nobleman, Arnaud de Batz, who bought Castelmore Castle. Charles de Batz moved to Paris in the 1630s under his mother's name from famous family, Françoise de Montesquiou d'Artagnan. He entered the company of the royal musketeers in 1632, thanks to the patronage of a family friend, the captain-lieutenant (actual commander) of the company of Monsieur de Treville (Jean-Armand du Peyret, Count of Troisville). As a musketeer, d'Artagnan managed to gain the patronage of the influential Cardinal Mazarin, the chief minister of France since 1643. In 1646, the musketeer company was disbanded, but d'Artagnan continued to serve his patron Mazarin.
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Monument to the historical d'Artagnan in Osh, France
Military career
D'Artagnan made a career as a courier for Cardinal Mazarin in the years after the First Fronde. Because of d'Artagnan's devoted service during this period, the cardinal and Louis XIV entrusted him with many secret and sensitive matters that required complete freedom actions. He followed Mazarin during his exile in 1651 due to the hostility of the aristocracy. In 1652, d'Artagnan was promoted to the rank of lieutenant of the French Guard, then to captain in 1655. In 1658, he became a second lieutenant (i.e., second-in-command) in the reconstituted company of the Royal Musketeers.
D'Artagnan was famous for his role in the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet was controller of Louis XIV's finances and sought to take Mazarin's place as advisor to the king. The impetus for this arrest was the grand reception given by Fouquet at his castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte in connection with the completion of its construction (1661). On September 4, 1661, in Nantes, the king summoned d'Artagnan to his place and gave him the order to arrest Fouquet. The amazed d'Artagnan demanded a written order, which was handed to him along with detailed instructions. The next day, d'Artagnan, having selected 40 of his musketeers, tried to arrest Fouquet as he left the royal council, but let him go (Fouquet got lost in the crowd of petitioners and managed to get into the carriage). Having rushed with the musketeers in pursuit, he overtook the carriage in the city square and made an arrest. Under his personal guard, Fouquet was taken to prison in Angers, from there to Vincennes Castle, and from there to the Bastille in 1663. Fouquet was guarded by musketeers under the personal leadership of d'Artagnan for 5 years - until the end of the trial that sentenced him to life imprisonment.
In 1667, d'Artagnan was promoted to captain-lieutenant of the musketeers, effectively commander of the first company, since the king was the nominal captain. Under his leadership, the company became exemplary military unit, in which many young nobles not only from France, but also from abroad, sought to gain military experience. Another of d'Artagnan's appointments was as governor of Lille, which was won in battle by France in 1667. D'Artagnan was an unpopular governor, and sought to return to the army. He got lucky when Louis XIV fought the Dutch Republic in the Franco-Dutch War. D'Artagnan was killed on June 25, 1673, with a bullet to the head during the siege of Maastricht, during a fierce battle for one of the fortifications.
On July 12, 1931, a monument to d'Artagnan was unveiled in Paris. And not to the Gascon who actually existed, but to the character of the famous novels by Alexandre Dumas. The historical musketeer is immortalized too. True, not in France, but in Holland, at the site of his death in the city of Maastricht. In a word, the date of July 12 is an excellent occasion to talk about who the prototypes of the heroes of Dumas the Father were.
Athos
Athos, the eldest, wisest of experience and the most mysterious of the four heroes of the novel, was given the name by a man who lived only 28 years and died, like a true musketeer, with a sword in his hand.
Armand de Silleg d'Athos d'Autevielle (Dotubiel) was born in the commune of Atos-Aspis near the Spanish border. Ironically, the parents of the prototype of the high-born Comte de La Fère were not hereditary nobles. His father came from a merchant family that received nobility, and his mother, although cousin Lieutenant-Commander of the Royal Musketeers, Gascon de Treville, was the daughter of a bourgeois - a respected merchant and elected juror. The real Athos served in the army from a young age, but happiness smiled on him only in 1641, when he was able to break into the ranks of the elite of the royal guard and become a private in a company of musketeers. Probably not last role family ties played a role here: de Treville was, after all, the second cousin of the real Athos. However, whoever was included in the king’s personal guard was not taken even if he had a “shaggy Gascon paw”: the young man was known as a brave man, a good soldier and deservedly wore the musketeer’s cloak.
Veniamin Smekhov - Athos in the film "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers", 1978
On December 22, 1643, near the Parisian market of Pré-aux-Claires, a fatal battle for Athos took place between the royal musketeers and the cardinal’s guards, who were lying in wait for one of His Majesty’s best fighters, Charles d’Artagnan, who was heading somewhere on his own business. Some biographers of the famous musketeer generally believe that Richelieu’s people sent in their place assassins. The experienced grunt d'Artagnan put up desperate resistance, but he would have had a hard time if Athos and his comrades had not been having fun at that time in one of the drinking establishments nearby. The musketeers, warned by the night watchman, an accidental witness to the brawl, furiously rushed to the rescue. Most of the attackers were killed or seriously wounded on the spot, while the rest fled. In this battle, Athos received a mortal wound. He was buried in the cemetery of the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice, in the registration books of which there is a record of “the escort to the burial place and burial of the deceased Armand Athos Dotubiel, a musketeer of the royal guard.”
The prototype of Athos lived only 28 years and died as a true musketeer
There is a story according to which d’Artagnan once saved Athos’ life during one of the street fights, and Athos fully returned his debt of honor, giving his own for saving d’Artagnan.
It is believed that Alexandre Dumas endowed each of his musketeers with the traits of someone close to him. So, in Count de La Fère, contemporaries identified Dumas’s first co-author and mentor, the writer Adolf Leuven, who was truly a Swedish count by origin. Restrained and cold in communication, Leven, like Athos, was a reliable and devoted friend for Dumas, the teacher of his son. It should be added that the count was known in the circles of Parisian bohemia as a big drinker - another trait of the famous musketeer.
Porthos
The prototype of the good-natured glutton and naive strongman Porthos is the old warrior Isaac de Porto. He came from a family of Protestant nobles in Béarn. There is an opinion that his grandfather Abraham Porto, a supplier of poultry to the court of King Henry of Navarre, who earned the court title of “kitchen officer,” was a Jew who converted to Protestantism and fled to liberal Navarre from Catholic Portugal, where his brothers in faith and blood were subjected to severe persecution.
Born in 1617 on the Lanne estate in the valley of the Ver River, Isaac de Porto was the youngest of three sons in the family. Consequently, he had the least chance of counting on an inheritance, so a military career was for Isaac the best option. At the age of sixteen or seventeen, de Porto entered military service. In 1642, he appears in the register of ranks of the French Guard regiment of the King's Military House as a guardsman of the company of Captain Alexandre des Essarts, the same one in which d'Artagnan began his service in Dumas's novel.
The prototype of Porthos was a Protestant
But whether the real Porthos was a musketeer is a big question. However, the Guards of Des Essarts traditionally supported with the musketeers friendly relations, and this division was considered as a source potential candidates as the king's closest bodyguards.
Isaac de Porto fought a lot and bravely. As a result, the wounds he received in battle made themselves felt, and he was forced to leave the service and Paris. Returning to his homeland, Isaac de Porto, after 1650, held the garrison position of keeper of the guard's ammunition in the fortress of Navarrance and continued to serve France. Subsequently he also acted as secretary of the provincial states in Béarn.
General Thomas - Alexandre Dumas
Having lived a long and honest life, the real Porthos died at the beginning of the 18th century, leaving his small homeland humble memory of the honored veteran and good man. His tombstone in the Saint-Sacrément chapel of the Church of Saint Martin in Pau remains to this day.
In the image of Porthos, Alexandre Dumas brought out many of the traits of his father, a military general during the Napoleonic Wars, who became famous not only for his Herculean exploits, but also for his scrupulous attitude to matters of honor and cheerful disposition.
Aramis
The sophisticated dandy Aramis, who was equally interested in issues of theology and fashion, was written by Alexandre Dumas based on the real-life musketeer Henri d'Aramitz. A native of Béarn, he belonged to an old noble family that supported the Huguenots. His grandfather became famous during the religious wars in France, fighting bravely against the king and the Catholics, and was promoted to captain. However, Henri's father, Charles d'Aramitz, broke with the family's Protestant past, came to Paris, converted to Catholicism and enlisted in the company of the Royal Musketeers. So Henri, who was born around 1620 and grew up in the family of the king’s bodyguard, was ordered by God himself to become a musketeer. This character's piety is also not a fictional trait. Like many converts, Aramis's father was a devout Catholic and, after leaving the guard, chose the path of church service, becoming a secular abbot in the Béarn Abbey of Aramis. Young Henri was raised in the Catholic spirit, and, as far as is known, from a young age he was really interested in issues of theology and religious philosophy. However, with no less zeal he mastered fencing and horse riding, and by the age of twenty he was considered a master of the blade in his homeland.
Luke Evans - Aramis in the film "The Musketeers", 2011
In 1640 or 1641, the captain-lieutenant of the musketeers de Treville, who sought to staff his company with fellow Gascons and Béarnians, invited the young Henri d'Aramitz, who was his cousin, to serve. The prototype of Aramis served in the guard for about seven or eight years, after which he returned to his homeland, married demoiselle Jeanne de Béarn-Bonnas and became the father of three children. After the death of his father, he assumed the rank of secular abbot of the Abbey of Aramitz and held it for the rest of his life. Henri d'Aramitz died in 1674 surrounded by loving family and numerous friends.
Dumas endowed the literary Aramis with some of the traits of his grandfather
Alexandre Dumas endowed the literary Aramis with some of the traits of his grandfather, an educated aristocrat, a famous fashionista and a woman lover. Unlike the impeccably noble Athos and good-natured Porthos, Aramis appears in the cycle of novels about the magnificent four very controversial character, no stranger to intrigue and deceit. Perhaps the writer was never able to forgive his grandfather for the illegitimate status of his father, the son of a dark-skinned Haitian slave Marie-Cesset Dumas.
D'Artagnan
As you know, the figure of the daring and courageous d’Artagnan, the youngest of the four, is quite reliable. Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore (later d'Artagnan) was born in 1611 at the castle of Castelmore in Gascony. The origin of the future musketeer in the era of the supremacy of noble titles was more than dubious: his grandfather was a tradesman who appropriated the nobility after his marriage to the aristocrat Françoise de Coussol. Considering that titles in the Kingdom of France were not passed down through the female line, we can say that Charles de Batz was a self-proclaimed nobleman, or was not one at all. Around 1630, the young man set off to conquer Paris, where he was accepted into service as a cadet in the regiment of the French Guard in the company of Captain des Essarts. In memory of his father’s military merits, King Louis XIII ordered the young guard to be called by the noble surname of his mother, Françoise de Montesquiou d’Artagnan, who came from an impoverished branch of an old count’s family. In 1632, his father’s military merits provided the cadet d’Artagnan with another service: his father’s comrade in arms, captain-lieutenant of the musketeers de Treville, contributed to the transfer of Charles to his company. All subsequent military career d'Artagnan was somehow connected with the king's bodyguards.
The true d'Artagnan, while undoubtedly a brave and efficient soldier, nevertheless possessed a number of less chivalrous talents, which allowed his star to shine brightly among his contemporaries. Despite participating in dozens of desperate street battles with the cardinal’s guards, he was by no means impeccably loyal to the king, but understood perfectly well whose side was strong. D'Artagnan was one of the few musketeers who managed to gain the patronage of the all-powerful Cardinal Mazarin. Long years the Gascon performed the duties of a confidant and personal courier under the Chief Minister of France, successfully combining his service with them to the young king Louis XIV. The devotion of a savvy officer who was ready to do anything to carry out the will of his master and who knew how to keep his mouth shut was generously noted by the ranks: in 1655 d'Artagnan was promoted to captain of the French Guard, and in 1658 he became a second lieutenant (that is, deputy actual commander ) in a recreated company of the Royal Musketeers. Soon he began to call himself a count.
Coat of arms of d'Artagnan
In 1661, d'Artagnan gained rather scandalous fame for his unsightly role in the arrest of the Minister of Finance Nicolas Fouquet, whom the vengeful and capricious monarch was jealous of his luxury and wealth. Then the brave lieutenant of the musketeers with forty of his subordinates almost missed Fouquet and managed to capture him only after a desperate chase through the streets of Nantes. The musketeers of the 1st company for the first time became the subject of evil jokes and caustic ridicule of the ironic French.
In 1667, for his services in the battles against the Spaniards, Louis XIV appointed the newly promoted captain-lieutenant of his musketeers and the self-proclaimed Comte d'Artagnan as governor of Lille. Find mutual language The Gascon did not succeed with the freedom-loving townspeople, so he was incredibly glad when the Franco-Dutch War broke out in 1672, and he was allowed to leave the governorship. In the same year, d’Artagnan received from the hands of the king his last military rank - the rank of “field marshal” (major general).
Marshal d’Estrade about d’Artagnan: “It’s hard to find a better Frenchman”
On June 25, 1673, during the siege of Maastricht, during a fierce battle for one of the fortifications, in a reckless attack across open ground organized by the young Duke of Monmouth, d'Artagnan was killed by a musket bullet to the head. The Gascon's body was found stretched out on the bloody ground among the bodies of his dead soldiers. The French army sincerely mourned the death of the proven general. “It would be difficult to find a better Frenchman,” Marshal d’Estrade, who served under d’Artagnan for many years, later said. The king saw off his loyal subject with the words: “I have lost d’Artagnan, whom I trusted to the highest degree and who was suitable for any service.”
Count d'Artagnan was buried in the cemetery of the small church of Saints Peter and Paul near the city wall, which he so strived for in his last battle. Now there is a bronze monument there.
Monument to d'Artagnan in Maastricht
After d'Artagnan there remained a widow, Anna Charlotte Christina née de Chanlécy, a noble Charolais noblewoman, with whom he lived for 14 years, and two sons, both named Louis and who later made an excellent military career.
Mikhail Boyarsky as D'Artagnan. Photo: boiarsky.narod.ru
Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas "Three Musketeers" More than one generation has grown up. While historians pointed out to the writer how many inaccuracies there are in the image D'Artagnan, ordinary people followed with interest the adventures of the king’s brave personal guard. So, what is fact and what is fiction? Who really was the Gascon who became the prototype of the legendary image?
Despite the fact that many details of the story about D'Artagnan are fictitious, the creation of the image is based on the real life story of the Gascon, who was in the company of the royal musketeers. Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore was born ( full name D'Artagnan on his father's side) in 1613, Dumas moved the story 20 years ago to realize the idea of diamond pendants around which the entire action of the novel unfolds.
Charles Ogier inherited the surname D'Artagnan from his mother, Françoise de Montesquieu D'Artagnan, who came from the count family of de Montesquieu. After the death of his father, the Gascon inherited a more than modest fortune of three arquebuses, seven muskets and two swords. Among the bequests were also 6 pieces of lard and 12 salted geese. In a word, the musketeer frankly had nothing to start his journey in Paris with. It should also be remembered that D'Artagnan also inherited a bright red horse from his father. His father strictly ordered to take care of the horse, but the newly minted musketeer sold it for a very prosaic reason: the king's guards only owned gray horses.
The book D'Artagnan, like his real prototype, had a servant, since it was simply impossible to do without an assistant in this branch of the army. It was simply impossible to control a musket, the length of which was often greater than human height, often alone. The servant received a rich salary from D “Artagnan, he could easily afford it, since the lion’s share of his income came from his salary from his position as gatekeeper of the Tuileries, and later as caretaker of the royal poultry house. In both positions, D'Artagnan actually did practically nothing, but he received a stable salary of 2-3 thousand lire a year and was housed for free at the palace.
The ending of the career of both the book and the real D'Artagnan was brilliant: Dumas described his heroic death in battle with the rank of marshal of France, but in reality the Gascon died during the capture of Maastricht with the rank of field marshal. The news touched Louis XIV to the depths of his soul, who admitted that France has lost a wonderful warrior.
The heroes of the cult film about the adventures of the musketeers are still popular. Continuing the topic -.
The fact that the famous D'Artagnan actually existed has long been considered indisputable. Many have even read his memoirs, translated into Russian. But few people know that there is no more truth in this work than in the novels of Dumas, and his hero is not at all looks like the musketeer who lived and performed his exploits during the time of Louis XIV - the Sun King. And, it seems, he did not write any memoirs. And yet the magnificent Gascon - no matter whether natural or synthesized - continues to be “read.” First published in 1844, The Three Musketeers has been translated into 45 languages, with more than 70 million copies in print and 43 films, and the Gascon continues to win.
By 1843, Alexandre Dumas was known throughout Paris. The forty-year-old son of a mulatto general became famous for his plays and feuilletons, salon witticisms and loud love affairs. Not long ago he took up writing historical novels and now, as soon as it was light, he jumped out of bed and grabbed his pen. Huge, disheveled, he wrote down entire stacks of paper with lightning speed. To friends who came for a visit, he shouted from behind the door: “Wait, my friend, Muse is visiting me!” Over the course of a year, Dumas brought down three or four plump volumes on readers. This gave rise to the legend that a whole team of “literary blacks” worked for him. In fact, he wrote himself, and trusted his assistants only with the selection and verification of the material. The main one of his “blacks” was Auguste Macquet - a nondescript subject with an archive-memory where little-known details of the past were stored. Together they made up perfect couple: Reasoner Make extinguished the excessive enthusiasm of his ardent boss.
One fine day, Dumas went to the Royal Library to look for material for his next novel. Among the scattering of books, he came across an old tome entitled “Memoirs of M. D'Artagnan, Lieutenant-Commander of the First Company of the Royal Musketeers.” He vaguely remembered that this was the name of some military leader of the era he was interested in, and asked the kind librarian for the book to take home ". The memoirs were published in 1704 in Amsterdam in the printing house of Pierre Rouge - works that were banned in France were published there. The book indeed contained scandalous details about the life of the royal court, but Dumas was not too interested in them. He liked the hero himself much more - the brave Gascon, getting involved in dangerous adventures at every step. He also liked his comrades with the sonorous names of Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Soon Dumas announced that he had found in the same library the memoirs of Athos, which spoke about the new adventures of his musketeer friends. He simply made up this book , thereby continuing the relay of hoaxes started by the author of the so-called “Memoirs of D'Artagnan.”
 Memoirs of D'Artagnan. 1704 edition |
Did Dumas know about the true origin of D'Artagnan's book? Most likely, he did, but this did not bother him. He said that history is just a nail on which he hangs his colorful paintings. Another thing was confusing: the musketeer from the memories looked brave, cunning , dexterous, but not very attractive. He was a typical mercenary, ready to serve the highest bidder, and fearlessly slaying the right and wrong with his sword if they stood in his way. His attitude towards women was also far from romanticism. The writer had to work over the image of his hero, passing on to him some of his own traits. The result was the novel “The Three Musketeers”, published in 1844. The noble Gascon depicted there forever won the hearts of readers, but scientists - both historians and writers - were dissatisfied. Having rejected the heroes of Courtille and Dumas as impostors, they have been searching for the real D'Artagnan for a century and a half.
Not only D'Artagnan
The adventure classics of the 18th-19th centuries produced many bright heroes, and almost all of them have prototypes in real story. D'Artagnan is just one example. Another is the German baron Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Munchausen (1720-1797), about unusual fate which “Around the World” told last year. It is worth recalling that he not only outlived both of his authors - Raspe and Burger, but also threatened them with legal action for insulting his baronial dignity. The hero of Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe was, as we know, actually the British sailor Alexander Selkirk (1676-1720). True, he spent four years on a desert island instead of twenty-eight, and it was on the Juan Fernandez Islands, and not on Tobago, as Defoe wrote. The hero of Alphonse Daudet's novel "Tartarin of Tarascon" is based on the writer's cousin Jacques Reynaud (1820-1886), who once, in a romantic impulse, took Daudet to Algeria to hunt lions. In order not to offend his relative, the writer gave his hero the sonorous surname Barbarin, but in the town of Tarascon there was a family with that surname, and he had to be renamed Tartarin. The great detective Sherlock Holmes, according to scientists, is based on Conan Doyle's institute mentor, the famous surgeon Joseph Bell (1837-1911). Not only did he solve crimes using the deductive method, but he also smoked a pipe and played the violin. Even such an exotic hero as Captain Nemo had a prototype. Jules Verne calls him the Indian rebel leader Nana Sahib (1824-after 1857). This noble feudal lord disappeared without a trace after the defeat of the uprising - in principle, he could have hidden in sea depths. Alexandre Dumas himself did not always invent his heroes. For example, the story of the Count of Monte Cristo was born from a chapter of the book “The Police Without a Mask,” published in 1838 based on investigative archives. It talked about a young shoemaker, Francois Picot, who was arrested on false charges on the eve of his wedding. Seven years later, he was released and began to take revenge on the informers, killing three, but fell at the hands of the fourth. There was also a treasure in this story, bequeathed to Pico by his cellmate, the Italian abbot.
On the banks of the Garonne
The trail of the famous musketeer leads to the banks of the Garonne and Adour, to ancient Gascony, where they are still proud of their famous countryman. However, neither Courtille nor Dumas, who was entirely dependent on him for facts, knew the musketeer’s birthplace. They considered him a native of the Béarn region neighboring Gascony, where the real D'Artagnan had never been. Moreover, he bore a completely different name - Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore. This was found out by French historians, and in particular Jean-Christian Petifis, the author of the book "The True D'Artagnan", published in Russian translation in the famous ZhZL series.
Charles was born around 1614 in the heart of Gascony. He could not be proud of the antiquity of his family: his great-grandfather Arno Batz was an ordinary merchant who bought the castle from the completely bankrupt owners. Having slipped a couple of livres to a royal official, he received the title of nobility along with the noble prefix “de”. His grandson Bertrand strengthened his status by marrying the maiden Françoise de Montesquiou. However, the young man’s dowry received only the destroyed castle of Artagnan and numerous debts, the payment of which deprived his family of the remnants of their fortune. In fact, Bertrand only had Castelmore Castle left, where Charles, his brothers Paul, Jean and Arno, and three sisters were born.Despite the loud name, it was just a two-story stone house with two dilapidated turrets. We can judge its situation from the inventory of property compiled in 1635 after the death of Bertrand de Batz. The interior of the lower living room consisted of a long trestle table, a sideboard and five worn leather armchairs. Next was the matrimonial bedroom, where there were two closets - one with linen, the second with dishes. Also on the ground floor there was a kitchen with big boiler and a huge vat for salting meat. Upstairs besides another living room with the same old furniture there were four bedrooms for children and guests. From there a staircase led to one of the turrets, where there was a dovecote. The inventory meticulously lists the family's property: two swords, six brass candlesticks, six dozen napkins...
After the death of the head of the family, the house and six farms belonging to the de Batzes passed into the hands of greedy creditors. Fortunately, by that time the children had already been placed thanks to influential relatives. The daughters, despite their young age, were betrothed to local nobles ahead of time. The elder brother Paul was the first to join the ranks of the musketeers, but soon exchanged honorable service under the king for an army position. Having gained fame and money on the battlefields, he bought the family estate and increased its area at the expense of neighboring lands. This strong business executive lived for almost a hundred years and died with the title of Marquis de Castelmore. Jean, who also served in the guard, disappeared early from the annals of history, probably dying in battle or a duel. Brother Arno chose a spiritual career and was an abbot for many years.
...It’s hard to get rid of the feeling that Dumas brought out three brothers in the images of Porthos, Athos and Aramis. But the writer knew nothing about them, and Charles D’Artagnan himself (we’ll still call him that) saw them much less often than his imaginary friends.
Why “invented” if they really existed? The fact is that all the glorious four could communicate only for a few short months in 1643. In December of this year, in one of the countless skirmishes, Armand de Silleg, also known as the Lord de Athos, was mortally wounded. That same autumn, Isaac de Porto, a nobleman from Lanne, whom Dumas renamed Porthos for the sake of rhyme, joined the musketeers. A few years later he retired and returned home, disappearing there into obscurity. The third musketeer, Henri D'Aramits, was indeed a close friend of D'Artagnan and in 1655 retired to his native Béarn, where he became an abbot. All three were relatives of the captain of the musketeers de Treville - also a descendant of the merchant who conferred the title of nobility. This brave officer enjoyed the full confidence of the king and actively promoted his fellow Gascons. D'Artagnan also counted on this when he went to Paris with a letter of recommendation to Treville in his pocket. This was until 1633, when he was mentioned among the participants in the review of musketeers. At that time he was about 18 years old, as Dumas writes. However, La Rochelle had already been taken, the story with the pendants (if there was one) was successfully resolved, and the Duke of Buckingham, with whom the Gascon allegedly met, died from the assassin's dagger. To the disappointment of fans, all these adventures of the brave musketeer were fictitious. But there were plenty of real ones in his life , and he anticipated them, rushing to Paris on the pinto horse glorified by the writer.
In the footsteps of the musketeer
Not many historical places associated with the name of the famous musketeer have survived today. The main one, of course, is the French castle of Castelmore, but it is privately owned and visitors are not allowed into it. But in the neighboring town of Lupiac a hotel was named after D'Artagnan, and in the Gascon capital Osh a monument was erected to him in 1931. Nearby is the village of Artagnan, where a hundred years ago Count Robert de Montesquiou created a museum dedicated to his ancestor. After the count's death, the collection was lost in the fire, and the castle stood in ruins for many years. Today it has been restored, but only the walls remain from the previous building. D'Artagnan's house in Paris on the corner of Bac Street and the Seine embankment was demolished in the middle of the 19th century. Of course, the Louvre, the Palais Royal, the Tuileries Garden and other places mentioned in Dumas' novel have been preserved. The gloomy fortress of Pignerol in Provence still stands, where the musketeer had to be the jailer of Minister Fouquet. And in the Dutch Maastricht you can find a place behind the city wall where a brave general was killed by a bullet. In general, not much has survived, so directors of films about D'Artagnan do without historical surroundings. For example, the famous Soviet film of 1978 was filmed in the Crimea and partly in the Baltic states, which did not hinder its success at all.
Path to glory
There were many musketeers in the armies of that time; that was the name given to all soldiers armed with muskets. This bulky predecessor to the rifle was operated by a flintlock or, like a cannon, by a lit fuse. In both cases, shooting was a difficult task: the muzzle of the musket had to be mounted on a special stand, which made it possible to at least somehow aim. Each musketeer was accompanied by a servant who carried a stand, a supply of gunpowder and all kinds of equipment for cleaning capricious weapons. The musket was useless in close combat, and its owner used a sword. A company of musketeers was created to guard the king in 1600, although until 1622 its fighters were called carabinieri. The company consisted of a little more than a hundred people, half of whom were light hand de Treville turned out to be Gascons. D'Artagnan also fit into their ranks, renting an apartment on Vieux-Colombier Street - Old Dovecote. According to Courtille, he very soon began an affair with the owner's wife, who, under the pen of Dumas, turned into the charming Madame Bonacieux.
The life of the musketeers was not easy. They received little, and besides, guards etiquette dictated that they squander their salaries in taverns. The king was always short of money, and his guards used their own money to buy uniforms, including the famous cloaks and hats with feathers. It was necessary to dress as fashionably as possible in order to keep up with the hated rivals - the cardinal's guards. Clashes with them occurred almost every week and claimed many lives. Even during the war, when the regulations prohibited duels on pain of death, opponents found an opportunity to wave their swords. We know nothing about duels, nor about the military exploits of D'Artagnan in those early years. Only the legend of his participation in the siege of Arras in the spring of 1640 has survived. The young musketeer showed not only courage, but also wit. The besieged Spaniards wrote on the gate: “When Arras is French, the mice will eat the cats.” The Gascon, under fire, got closer and wrote a short “not” before the word “will.”
At the end of 1642, the all-powerful Richelieu died, and King Louis XIII briefly survived him. Power was in the hands of the regent Anne of Austria and her favorite Cardinal Mazarin. This miser decided to disband the musketeers, and D'Artagnan found himself out of work. Only in 1646 did he and his Gascon friend François de Bemo gain an audience with the cardinal and receive the positions of his personal couriers. For several years, the former musketeer raced along the roads in the heat and cold France, carrying out the instructions of his master. finest hour came in August 1648, during the terrible days of the Fronde, when the Parisians rebelled against the hated power of Mazarin. D'Artagnan, in a carriage, managed to pave the way through the ranks of the rebels and take the cardinal and the young king and his mother out of the Louvre. Mazarin soon left the country and settled in the town of Brühl near Cologne. The Gascon continued to serve him, visiting the cardinal's supporters throughout Europe Finally, in 1653, Louis XIV, who had come of age, again brought the Italian to power, and with him D'Artagnan returned to Paris in triumph.
Soon he found himself under the walls of besieged Bordeaux - the last stronghold of the Fronde. Disguised as a beggar, he managed to penetrate the city and persuade its defenders to surrender. Having also fought with the Spaniards, he returned to Paris, where the king in 1657 restored a company of musketeers. At the same time, they had a single uniform: red camisoles and blue cloaks with a white bandage. And the horses of the king’s defenders were gray, so they were called a company of Gray Musketeers (later another company was created - the Black Musketeers). However, Mazarin did not increase their salaries. Therefore, some took money from rich mistresses, others looked for a way out in marriage. D'Artagnan also followed this path, marrying the wealthy heiress Charlotte de Chanlécy in 1659. The cardinal himself and many courtiers were present at the wedding, wine flowed like a river. As a dowry, the musketeer received one hundred thousand livres of annual income and a two-story mansion on the corner of the street Bac and embankment of the Seine.Within a year of each other, the couple had sons Louis and Louis-Charles. However, it was not an idyll. The newlywed was already over thirty, she had already been married and was not distinguished by either beauty or gentle disposition. And D'Artagnan, with his psychology of an old bachelor, quickly got tired of the unusual family life. A year later he went to war and since then has been home only twice. In rare letters, he justified himself: “My beloved wife, duty is above all for me.” Charlotte bit her lips, imagining how her husband was having fun with other girls. She knew very well that the musketeer in his youth was a desperate womanizer, and even now he was far from old for amorous exploits. In 1665, she decided on an extreme measure: she took the children and left for the village, leaving her husband forever. Both sons of the Gascon became officers and lived to old age, but only the youngest continued the family, whose descendants lived until the 19th century.
Jailer reluctantly
Not too regretting the loss of his wife, D'Artagnan set off to meet new adventures. Back in 1661, he and the king visited the luxurious castle of Vaux, the residence of the surintendent of finance Nicolas Fouquet. This trickster often confused the state treasury with his own, and his palace was far superior in splendor to the Louvre Louis began to frown even at the gate, on which the minister’s coat of arms was displayed: a squirrel with the Latin motto “I’ll fit in anywhere.” When he saw the marble grottoes, the marvelous park with fountains, the dining room, where the tables were moved by an invisible mechanism, the fate of the insolent courtier was decided. D'Artagnan was ordered to arrest the minister and take him to the impregnable castle of Pignerol in Provence. In Nantes, Fouquet, sensing something was wrong, tried to escape, but the musketeer caught up with him in the city crowd and transferred him to another carriage with bars on the windows. In the same carriage the minister was taken to Pignerol, and the king offered the Gascon the position of its commandant. His answer went down in history: “I prefer to be the last soldier of France than its first jailer.” And yet, D'Artagnan had to spend more than one year in the fortress. The prisoner did not give him any worries: broken by his fall, Fouquet became very pious and if he annoyed the musketeer with anything, it was with religious teachings.
Having rejected the position of jailer, D'Artagnan willingly accepted the title of caretaker of the royal poultry house, fortunately, no one required him to personally clean the cages of birds. In addition, the court sinecure brought good income. He even began to call himself a count, and in the spring of 1667 he was appointed captain of the musketeers. This position corresponded to that of a general. The dream of a young man who once came from Osh to Paris on a piebald nag has come true. But soon the battle trumpet again called the restless Gascon on a campaign. During new war with the Spaniards he distinguished himself during the capture of Lille and was appointed its governor. According to contemporaries, he ruled fairly, forbidding his soldiers to oppress the population. True, in the summer of 1671 he brutally suppressed a peasant uprising in the Vivarai region. Well, he remained the son of his century; after all, the rebels were the enemies of the king, for whom he felt not only loyal, but also, to some extent, paternal feelings...In the summer of 1673, D'Artagnan and his musketeers went to Flanders, where the army of Marshal Turenne was besieging Maastricht. More than once the French broke through to the walls of the city, but the Spaniards kept throwing them back. On the evening of June 24, after a powerful artillery barrage, both companies of musketeers rushed to the attack and occupied one from the enemy forts. In the morning, the Spaniards forced them to retreat under heavy fire. Few of the French reached their positions. There was no D'Artagnan, in whose search several volunteers went. His body was found only in the evening: the commander’s throat was pierced by a bullet. Despite Dumas, he did not manage to become a marshal of France. He soon received this title cousin Pierre de Montesquiou, by the way, did not distinguish himself in anything special.
Alexandre Dumas was more than once reproached for inattention to historical truth. However, his hero, thanks to chance or artistic flair, turned out to be much closer to the real D'Artagnan than the unprincipled condottiere Courtille. However, in the combined character of The Three Musketeers, all three D'Artagnan coexist, and each reader can choose a hero for himself. One will be closer to a desperate romantic, suspiciously similar to Mikhail Boyarsky. To others, he is a cunning and witty man who emerges unscathed from any troubles. And the third is an honest servant who made the nobleman’s motto the law of life: “The sword is for the king, honor is for no one!”
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