The Three Musketeers is a classic novel full of intrigue, friendships, adventure and love. The central character is the brave, young hero d’Artagnan. Les Trois Mousquetaires was published in 1844 by French novelist Alexandre Dumas. But d’Artagnan and the Musketeers were real 17th century characters and NOT fiction. Dumas did however take some liberties with d’Artagnan’s courageous life story. What is the difference between fact and fiction?
The Musketeers Regiment was formed in 1622 by French King Louis XIII as his personal guard. They acted as bodyguards for the royal family and defended the Tuileries and Louvre palaces in Paris. Originally just 100 men, it was made up of proven soldiers, gentlemen and noblemen, who had served in the regular army first, so it was an elite group. They were a mounted regiment, armed with swords and muskets.
The Musketeers were a blend of soldier, bodyguard, and enforcer of royal rule. Their dashing uniform was a blue, sleeveless tunic with a white cross on the back and front, worn over a scarlet coat. Their “captain” was the king himself; however, Musketeer command was left to a captain-lieutenant.
Dumas’ novel is based in the 1620s and tells the story of a young, poor d’Artagnan who leaves his small town in Gascony and heads to Paris to join the Musketeers. He is taken in by three famous members, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Together they embark on adventures countering the political maneuverings of the ambitious Cardinal Richelieu and his Cardinal’s guard.
The real d’Artagnan’s name was Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Count d’Artagnan.
He was born around 1611 near the town of Lupiac, Gascony in southwestern France. Unlike Dumas’ novel, Charles did not come from humble roots. His family had noble blood and lived in a modest chateau estate. D’Artagnan himself was a middle child of seven children.
Young Charles grew up learning to hunt, ride, and fence. There were few career prospects at home, so around 1630, he decided to chart a new course in his life and left Gascony for Paris. Like the d’Artagnan in the Dumas novel, Charles had the ambition of joining Louis XIII’s famous Musketeers Guard.
When he arrived in Paris, Charles shrewdly began using his mother’s family name, d’Artagnan. His uncle, Henri de Montesquiou d’Artagnan, was an influential figure in Paris. Unlike the novel, no one could join the Musketeers without having proven themselves in the military, so the real d’Artagnan joined the regular guard. His regiment saw much action, taking part in various successful sieges across western Europe.
D’Artagnan’s reputation for cool-headed bravery in conflicts eventually caught the attention of Cardinal Mazarin, the second most powerful man in France. Mazarin was Richelieu’s successor as First Minister of France. Upon the death of Louis XIII, in 1643, Mazarin became Regent for the new five-year-old king, Louis XIV. As such, Mazarin acquired much power and garnered many enemies.
With Mazarin’s patronage, d’Artagnan finally was able to join the Musketeers in 1644 at age 33.
He was now part of an elite brotherhood of soldiers, answering only to the King, built on discipline and daring. At the time, the Musketeer captain-lieutenant was Captain Troisvilles (Tréville). Other famous members included Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Autevielle (Athos), Isaac de Porteau (Porthos) and Henri d’Aramitz (Aramis). D’Artagnan loved being a musketeer and thrived in the Guard.
He became one of the Cardinal’s few trusted agents, carrying out dangerous missions that required intelligence and a cool head. He rose steadily through the ranks, trusted for royal missions where failure was not an acceptable outcome. D’Artagnan’s loyalty and bravery made him useful during the years of The Fronde, a civil war when nobility rebelled against royal authority.
He was steadily promoted in the years that followed. Under Mazarin’s patronage, d’Artagnan became eventually became a lieutenant in the Musketeers. D’Artagnan even acted as a go-between for the Cardinal when Mazarin was exiled from France by the King in 1651.
By the late 1650s, d’Artagnan had also gained the trust of King Louis XIV. The King was still young, barely eighteen. D’Artagnan, now in his forties, had spent years proving himself both in the field and in court. Trust, loyalty, and friendship had grown between the two men. When Louis XIV traveled south in 1659 to marry the Infanta of Spain, d’Artagnan went with him.
Although Dumas’ hero remained a bachelor, in reality d’Artagnan married.
Once settled as a Musketeer officer, in 1659 he married Lady Anne-Charlotte Boyer de Chanlecy, the widowed baronne de Sainte-Croix in Burgundy. They had two sons together in 1660 and 1661, both named Louis – the first after Louis XIV, and the second after Louis, the Dauphin heir. The Sun King even agreed to be godfather for his first born. The Musketeer also succeeded to his mother’s family’s noble title and formally became Count d’Artagnan.
One of d’Artagnan’s most famous missions was in 1661, when Louis XIV removed one of the most powerful figures in France, Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances. Fouquet had spent years amassing wealth and power, building the magnificent Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. He threw dazzling parties, and forget, or did not care, that that No One outshines the Sun King.
The King had Fouquet arrested quietly after a meeting of the royal court at Nantes. After the council ended, d’Artagnan himself and a small contingent of Musketeers arrested him on charges of embezzlement and high treason. Fouquet was taken completely by surprise with no chance to flee in advance.
The king assigned d’Artagnan as Fouquet’s personal jailer for the next three years during a long trial. D’Artagnan’s duty as gaoler ended in 1665, when Foucquet was convicted and sentenced to the prison-fortress of Pignerol in the Italian Alps. Unfortunately, d’Artagnan marriage suffered from his long and frequent assignments away from home. The couple officially separated in 1665, his wife raising their two sons alone. With the failure of his marriage, he threw himself into his career as a Musketeer.
D’Artagnan fought in sieges at Lancrecies and Saint-Ghislaine. In 1667, he finally earned a promotion to captain-lieutenant of the Musketeers at 55. D’Artagnan had reached the peak of his power. It may have been the second highest Musketeer rank, but since captain, was reserved for the king himself, he was effectively in charge.
By the early 1670s, d’Artagnan was in sixties, quite old for a soldier during that century.
He was semi-retired when in 1672 a new war broke out between France and the Dutch Republic (United Provinces of the Nederlands) and he was called back to duty yet again. D’Artagnan was made a Brigadier and returned to the battlefield. In classic fashion, he threw himself back into action, leading from the front as he always did.
The French invasion of the Netherlands was led by Louis XIV himself and went well as the country was mostly overrun. The fighting centered around Maastricht, a fortress city whose defenses were among the strongest in Europe. In 1673, the city was surrounded and a siege began in earnest. The artillery bombardment lasted for five days. It was followed by an assault which included the King’s Musketeer Guard, led by d’Artagnan himself.
D’Artagnan’s company attacked a fortification protecting the Tongres Gate. Within half an hour of fierce fighting, they had control of it, a flag of the fleur-de-lis planted firmly on the parapet. D’Artagnan then led his men to the ramparts of Maastricht. On 25 June 1673, during a vicious assault, a musket shot struck d’Artagnan in the neck. He died within minutes, at the age of 60.
The mantra of the Musketeers, was “All for one, and one for all!” Two Musketeers dashed forward to retrieve their captain’s body, but were killed and fell at his side. Two more men attempted the same and suffered the exact same fate. The irony is that the Musketeers were assigned rest and recuperation that day. But upon hearing that the French were losing men at the Maastricht wall, d’Artagnan and his men leapt to their rescue.
The Musketeers were grief-stricken over the loss of their beloved captain.
In 17th century wartime, it was common to bury the dead near the battlefield where they fell. Very few bodies were brought home. It was not practical or even possible. There are no records, no marked grave, of where he lies. Somewhere near the walls of Maastricht, the real, valiant d’Artagnan found his final resting place.
Louis XIV wrote to his wife, Maria Theresa, that evening. ‘Madame, I have lost d’Artagnan, in whom I had the utmost confidence and who merited it in all occasions.’ Intelligent, loyal, and brave, d’Artagnan was as much a hero in real-life as on the printed page. Thanks to Alexandre Dumas, his legend not only lives on, but in fact grew.
Over time, various writers picked up the threads of his real life and wove them into fiction that would make him world famous for centuries. Each version added a little more fiction, a little more swashbuckling, but underneath it all, the real D’Artagnan emerged.
In 1700, French novelist, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras published Mémoires de Monsieur d’Artagnan. It claimed to be a firsthand account of d’Artagnan’s adventures, told in his own voice. It was not exactly a biography, nor pure fiction. Courtilz mixed real historical events with fiction, filling in the gaps with his own imagination.
The Mémoires painted d’Artagnan as brave, clever, and resourceful, the kind of man who could survive both court intrigues and battlefield dangers with a quick wit and sharp sword. A century and a half later, Alexandre Dumas came across Courtilz’s Mémoires and saw their potential for his new adventure novel.
Dumas’s fictional adaptation was likewise not a strict historical one. The events of The Three Musketeers take place in the 1620’s under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richeleau. The real d’Artagnan did not arrive in Paris until the 1630’s and had his career under Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin.
In The Three Musketeers, he is young, poor, and quick to fight. He charges into duels and pledges loyalty to the king. The real d’Artagnan was ten years older, wealthier and more seasoned when he became a Musketeer. He lived a life filled with more leadership duties than swashbuckling. But still, Dumas captured his spirit and bravery. With Dumas, d’Artagnan became a symbol of loyalty, friendship, and courage for centuries to come.
Many filmmakers created movies about the Musketeers, putting their own fictional spin on Alexandre Dumas’ novel. One of the earliest versions was the silent film The Three Musketeers in 1921, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Hollywood kept coming back to the popular story with versions in the 1940s, 50s, 70s, 90s, and most recently in 2011. In the end, whether it’s through memoirs, novels, movies or TV series, d’Artagnan’s story and the brave Musketeers manage to live on.