"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas - Bookworm History

Episode 13: On collaborators, memoirs, the ghosts behind the Musketeers
"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas

Greetings, folks! On this episode of Bookworm History we're off on an adventure in the name of the king as we discuss the story behind "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas. I first discovered "The Three Musketeers" when I was 14 and was swept away into a world of adventures, swashbucklers, and feats of daring-do. It was the book that really fueled my interest in history and started me down the path of separating fact from fiction within historical works. As a result of digging into Dumas, Hugo, Orczy, Stendhal and many others I probably learned more of European history than I did in high school history classes.

The tale behind "The Three Musketeers" is one of controversy, as we try to sort out exactly what August Maquet's role was. It also transports us back to seventeenth century France, as we uncover the real people behind Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan.

For more information about the real d'Artagnan, as well as the other Musketeers' namesakes check out this article from Macmillan's Magazine. The author makes the same faux pas Dumas does in assuming "The Memoirs of Charles de Batz-Castelmore" are real, but otherwise his information is good and fascinating: https://books.google.com/books?id=mIl...

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