ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Tracking down the life story of a man who died more than two hundred years ago was a new experience for me. I met many wonderful people along the road, as I always do, but none of them had known my subject personally. This time I had to rely on old papers—letters, diaries, memoirs, manuscripts, newspaper cuttings, and battlefield reports. That’s why now I must first give thanks to the many people who watch over these precious scraps of paper and parchment and who gave their time to help me sift through the thousands of puzzle pieces to put this story together. I want to thank all the archivists and librarians of France for preserving their country’s heritage with such exemplary zeal—when you are the center of the Western world for so long, there is a lot ofpatrimoine to preserve—and I want to give a special thanks to the generosity and care of the following people and institutions: first and foremost, the former, current, and future staff at the Musée Alexandre Dumas (Viller-Cotterêts); the Société historique régionale de Villers-Cotterêts; Madame Decubert and Alain Guena at the Archives de l’armée de la terre at the Service historique de la Défense (Chateau de Vincennes); Claudine Boulouque at the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris; Gilles Henry; Aurelia Rostaing at the Archives nationales; Baron de Méneval and the library staff at the Fondation Napoléon; Catherine Fevrier at the Bibliothèque universitaire de Nantes; Jean Hournon; Alfred Fierro; Brigitte Julien-Leynaud at the Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne; the research staff of the Bibliothèque nationale de France; Michel Albert and Pierre Kerbrat at l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques; Mireille Pastoureau at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France; Bibliothèque central du Service de santé des armées; Agnès Plaire at the COARC (Conservation des oeuvres d’art religieuses et civiles); the Bibliothèque du musée de la Préfecture de Police (Paris); Frédérique Desmet at the Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais; the Archives départementales de l’Aisne; the Archives départementales du Morbihan; the Archives nationales d’outre-mer (Aix-en-Provence); Valérie Hubert at the Archives départementales de Seine Maritime; Carole Pilarz at the Bibliothèque des arts décoratifs; Véronique Nachtergal at the Centre des archives économiques et financières of the Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et du Commerce extérieur; Alexandra Vaquero Urruty and Sophie Harent at the Musée Bonnat-Helleu of Bayonne; André Azzam at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (Cairo); the Institut d’Egypte (Cairo); the officers of the Italian Navy at the Castel Sant’Angelo (coastal fortress) at Taranto, and the sea and inland fortresses at Brindisi, Italy; the Biblioteca Nazionale, Napoli; the Archivio di Stato di Taranto; Cécile Bosquier at the Centre de documentation at the Atelier de Restauration et de Conservation des photographies de la Ville de Paris; Jean-Christophe Clamagirand at Roger Viollet; Jessica Almonte at the Image Works; Mimi Awad at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria).
Once again, countless people on various continents sustained the author in his wanderings and helped him on his quest, and I thank everyone for their hospitality, their generosity, their company. First, I must give special thanks to the Dumasians of Villers-Cotterêts, who helped get my hunt off to such an explosive start, and who made it always enjoyable on subsequent visits: Chief Musketeer François Angot, Alain Goldie, Xavier Blutel, Barbara Neavyn, and former Deputy Mayor Fabrice Dufour. A bit outside of Villers-Cotterêts, I owe particular thanks to Erick Noël, who showed me the slavers’ mansions in Nantes and Paris; Claude Schopp, maître of all things Dumas; and Ulrike Voswinckel, who introduced me to the wonders of Apulia. Thanks to Andre Aciman, Madame d’Albufera, Charles Ardai, Noga Arikha, Chahira Arnaout, Jojo Boulad, Eliane Bros-Brann, Peter Canby, Jean Charles de Castelbagac, Marion Charobim, Jean Luc Colonna, the Daubeuf family, Carine Delaporte, Patricia Delouard, Amir and Nathalie Farman-Farma, Henry Finder, John Glassie, Betsy Gotbaum, Prince Michel de Grèce, Nigel Hetherington, Todd Jackson, Melik Kaylan (for his obsession with the death of Porthos), Sylvie and Keith King, Ali Korhan, Liz Macklin, Dott. Gino Maddalena, Chah Mafouz, Ada Martella, Maestro Ramon Martinez (of the Martinez Academy of Arms), Meryam Mashak, Amy Matouk, Fabienne Meurrens, David Remnick, Aaron Retica, Beatrice Monti von Rezzori, Claude Ribbe, Admiral Francesco Ricci, Jacqueline Jorcin Roch, Paola Romagnani, Mahmoud Sabit, Henri and Estelle Saint-Bris, Commissaire Julien Sapori (de la police), Sue Shapiro, Dan Simon, Marcello Simonetta, Raymond Stock, Ben Tyner, Bob Weil, Marc Weitzmann, Dorothy Wickenden, and Massimo Zanca. Thanks also to three people whose names I neglected to write down: the Haitian man who showed me how to cut cane, the Dominican farmer who taught me about coffee growing, and the Apulian fencing coach who demonstrated how Dumas likely fought off his attackers in the cell with his cane.
On to the people who helped me bring this story from the world to the page, beginning with those who kept me sane, organized, and alive during the process:
Until she went off to China to become a television host, pop singer, and movie martial artist, the inimitable Aventurina King was the world’s best assistant. She lent me a hand with, among other things, document photography, computer programming, archive sifting, arm twisting, and strategizing, not to mention French, Italian, and Arabic translation, dietary advice, and music selection. (I was annoyed to find out she knew nothing about auto repair.) Along the way, she kept accumulating new skills so frequently that I was reminded of a useful truth: you can self-improve your way out of almost anything.
For keeping me from getting lost in the old growth forests of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French documents, my deep thanks to Lorraine Margherita, a born archivist who turned out to have many other talents up her sleeve, along with unparalleled energy. Lorraine originally helped me by transcribing and translating some of the document backlog I was accumulating; then she revealed her genius at organizing and turned thousands of highresolution photographs into a vast online archive. But it was only toward the end of my years of traveling, accumulating, researching, and writing—after I thought I’d found all it was possible to find—that Lorraine asked if she could try doing a little research for me and, lo and behold, various treasures that had been eluding me for years—notably the missing photographs of the Dumas statue the Nazis destroyed, certain papers from Dumas’s arrival in France, and the priceless third volume of Dr. Desgenettes’s Egyptian memoir—materialized. And despite the difference in our time zones, Lorraine was always on the other end of a Skype line when something crucial came up.
After research is said and done, there is the fact-checking. Helping me with eagle-eyed persistence and doggedness to review every line of the manuscript was, first, Alexandra Schwartz, who has since brought her razor-sharp intelligence to the New York Review of Books (which is very lucky to have her), and then Paul Sager, another keen intellect and class act. Both Alex and Paul combed over the manuscript and found microscopic—and not so microscopic—errors to correct. Paul also turned out to be an expert proofreader, crack researcher, and a great sounding board for how my assertions might sound to an academic historian.
On the “New York” side of this endeavor, I have been blessed by my association with some of the best people working in publishing. My miraculous agent, Tina Bennett, is a legend for good reason. Tina has been ready to follow General Dumas up the ice cliff face and into the line of fire since the day I first mentioned him to her, and her unwavering faith is a key reason why this book is in your hands. (If Tina had been there when Napoleon and Dumas faced off, the outcome might have been less certain.) A musketeer shout is also due to Svetlana Katz, another loyal supporter of the general, who has shown kind support to me over many years.
I owe a huge debt to my fearless editor, Rick Horgan, who also well knows what it means to wait and hope, but who never stopped believing that, someday, I would bring him the goods. Rick is the king of laconic understatement (except when he sits down to write you one of his incisive twenty-page letters), and all his communications, on paper and in person, make me pleased once again that I chose this crazy profession. It’s a rare and wonderful thing to have a “boss” who always means what he says and can always make you smile. Nathan Roberson helps Rick out a lot with wrangling his more troublesome authors; therefore I definitely owe him thanks as well.
Crown is truly a team—a regiment—and while many of the faces around the table have changed since I signed on, this spirit and sense of shared enterprise seems, if anything, to have gotten stronger. Maya Mavjee and Molly Stern weren’t here when I started out, but they are two generals who inspire supreme confidence; I am deeply grateful for their support. The other officers in this army are equally stellar. I would cheerfully march alongside Jay Sones, Dyana Messina, Annsley Rosner, and Jill Flaxman any day of the week. I thank Tina Constable for her early support and enthusiasm, though I never got to work with her. Thanks to Linda Kaplan, Courtney Snyder, Karin Schulze, and Rachel Berkowitz for signing up great European publishers for The Black Count. Thanks to Sam Weber for his remarkable painting of General Dumas, and to Christopher Brand and Eric White for using it to design such a striking and elegant cover. And thanks to Cindy Berman, she of infinite patience, and Maria Elias, and all the people in production who made the moving parts here—multiple map revisions, anyone?—fit perfectly together.
In the European theater of operations, I thank the remarkable people who are bringing The Black Count to the U.K. I was sad to lose Rebecca Carter as my editor when she switched hats to agenting, but it was my great good fortune that her replacement was Michal Shavit from Granta. Meanwhile, while I was still polishing drafts, Tom Drake Lee sent me letters that made me impatient to buy my own book—surely a good sign in a marketing director—and Liz Foley and Fiona Murphy were equally supportive. I also want to say a word about my new French publisher. Given the book’s subject, no translated edition could be more important than the French one. This is why I am so happy that General Dumas’s French legacy is in the hands of Alice d’Andigné at Flammarion.
I met Alice through my friend Clémence Boulouque, whom I met in turn when I brought L’orientaliste to France: getting to know Clémence has been one of the great added bonuses of choosing to devote myself to a French topic these past years. She is unfailingly generous and witty (especially, so I’m told, in old Aramaic).
As she did the last time, the wonderful Basia Grocholski allowed me to pull herself out of her real life to discuss the all-important topic of fonts and title spacing. Chuck Lin and Danielle Cacnio returned with their Zen mastery of the art of website construction.
Particular thanks are due to Melanie Thernstrom—my old friend of epic proportions, and the author herself of a growing pile of fascinating books—who put down her life, and her two adorable twins, to pick up my final manuscript and vastly improve it with her brilliant queries and suggestions. The child of historians, Melanie has never been very interested in history, which made her an unexpectedly ideal reader: though she came to appreciate military tactics more than I ever could have imagined, she posed the most fundamental questions, accepted nothing but the clearest answers, and, crucially, forced me to pull out a saber and slash “the boring parts.” I tried. Melanie’s husband, Michael Callahan, was also infinitely helpful and welcoming. When I needed a quiet place to work, they invited me stay on for weeks in an unused wing of a 1920s mansion they were renting; I worked round-the-clock, undisturbed, but got bright and witty company whenever I wanted to be disturbed. I literally cannot thank them enough.
This ideal writer’s retreat was capped off when Melanie’s father, Professor Stephan Thernstrom—who does like history—stopped by and generously read my manuscript; I thank Steve for his valuable suggestions, especially about the Thirteen Colonies and the early American republic.
On the home front, my remarkable wife, Julie Just, somehow managed to read and edit my pages with her usual literary clairvoyance and tireless devotion, while at the same time raising our two daughters and pursuing her own demanding career as an editor and agent. Though an expert reader of what we now call “YA literature,” she had somehow missed The Three Musketeers; I’m glad I could give her a new favorite novel. I’m sure all the nocturnal living that anyone so closely associated with me must bear has taken its toll, but I believe we will one day discover that good coffee and late nights of intellectual stimulation are, in fact, the cure for most modern maladies. At any rate, Julie’s ear is still incomparable, her taste impeccable, and her editorial eye essential. I find talking with her about sentences to be one of life’s great pleasures, and her reaction to what I write is half the fun of writing it.
As usual, my brother, Pete, who does double duty as my best friend, has been a rock of sanity and support during the years it took me to write this book. My amazing daughters, Lucy and Diana, drove me insane in the best possible way. I thank my well-read mother-in-law, Jean Bower, and the rest of my family for shows of support and kindness for the “writer in the family.” I thank my father, James, for bringing me up surrounded by books and for teaching me a respect for knowledge above material things. Finally, I thank my mother, Luce, a child of France in the late 1930s, who was raised there at a time when the Germans were destroying a lot more than statues. In an orphan’s home after the war, at age nine, my mom was given a book inside a care package: the 1938 Hachette edition of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. She tore through it late into the night, under the covers, until it was confiscated—and she had to wait six months to find out what happened to Edmond Dantès after he escaped from the Chateau d’If. She eventually brought it with her when she came to the United States, and this old green edition of Le Comte still sits on a shelf in my parents’ library, along with the other Dumas novels that my mom’s adoptive father, my beloved Great Uncle Lolek, gave her in her new home beneath the George Washington Bridge. These modest editions surely have something to do with why I just devoted the better part of the last decade to chasing down this story.