Notes on the Text of Between Two Kings

1. 1. CHÂTEAU DE BLOIS: Blois was an old medieval city on the Loire River about 120 miles southwest of Paris. The sprawling Château de Blois, which dominated the city, was a royal castle occupied by Prince Gaston from about 1620 until his death in 1660.
2. 2. ‘MONSIEUR’: By tradition at the French Court, the younger brother of the king and heir to the throne was always referred to as “Monsieur.” At this time “Monsieur” is Prince Gaston, the Duc d’Orléans (see GASTON under Historical Characters).
3. 3. HALL OF THE ESTATES GENERAL: Under the Ancien Régime the Estates General was an extraordinary gathering of representatives of the three classes, or Estates, of French society: the clergy, nobility, and commoners. The Château de Blois had hosted the Estates General in 1576 and 1588, during the prolonged crisis of the Wars of Religion.
4. 4. CHAMBORD: Just upriver from Blois, Chambord was the largest château in the Loire valley, built for King François I early in the 16th century as a hunting estate. Still stunning today, it’s one of the finest examples of French Renaissance architecture.
5. 5. “MADAME”: At the Royal Court, just as the younger brother of the king was called “Monsieur,” so his wife bore the informal title of “Madame.” At this time Madame was Prince Gaston’s second wife, Marguerite de Lorraine, Duchesse d’Orléans (1613–1672).
6. 6. QUEEN MARIE… CLIMBING DOWN A FORTY-SEVEN-FOOT DROP: The Italian heiress Marie de Médicis (1575–1642) was the second queen to France’s King Henri IV, who married her in 1600 in a desperate quest for an heir after the infertile Queen Marguerite was set aside. Exiled to Blois by her son Louis XIII in 1617 for rebellion, with the help of other conspirators she escaped in 1619 by climbing out a high window, after which she returned to plotting against the throne.
7. 7. ‘MONSIEUR LE PRINCE’: Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (1621–1686), cousin of Louis XIV and second heir to the throne after the king’s younger brother, was known at Court by the informal title of “Monsieur le Prince” (see CONDÉ under Historical Characters).
8. 8. THE VICTOR OF ROCROI AND LENS: Renowned as a general, the Prince de Condé was widely regarded as the military savior of France for his victories over the forces of Spain at the battles of Rocroi (1643) and Lens (1648). The Battle of Lens, recounted in Twenty Years After, was the young Vicomte de Bragelonne’s first military action.
9. 9. MY SISTER-IN-LAW: Prince Gaston refers here to Queen Anne, widow of Gaston’s elder brother King Louis XIII and mother of Louis XIV (see ANNE OF AUSTRIA in Historical Characters).
10. 10. BILLET-DOUX FROM THE BODICE OF MADEMOISELLE DE HAUTEFORT: This refers to a famous incident in which Louis XIII, jealous of the affections of Marie de Hautefort, one of the few women he ever coveted, concealed a presumed love letter in her bosom, whence the king was too shy and prudish to remove it. Dumas provided an amusing depiction of the scene in chapter 74 of The Red Sphinx.
11. 11. WE LIVE HERE IN THE PAST LIKE POLES: The Royal Court of Poland, east beyond the Germanies, was proverbially backward by French standards, though by intermarriage France provided monarchs to Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Poland returned the favor in the 18th century, providing a queen consort to Louis XV.
12. 12. DON LUIS DE HARO: Luis Méndez de Haro (1598–1661) was a Grandee of Spain who succeeded the Count-Duke of Olivares in 1643 as King Philip’s favorite and leading minister. He negotiated with Mazarin the Treaty of the Pyrenees that ended the long war between France and Spain and led to the wedding of the Spanish infanta to Louis XIV.
13. 13. WE SHALL RE-CROWN THEM WITH MYRTLES: In ancient times, military victors were crowned with laurel leaves, but a crown of myrtle, associated with Venus, was a symbol of love.
14. 14. THE ESTATE OF THE COMTE DE LA FÈRE: Athos’s modest estate just outside Blois had first been introduced in Twenty Years After, where it was referred to as Bragelonne, presumably to explain Raoul’s noble name. (All French nobles were known by the names of their domains.) In Between Two Kings and subsequent volumes, Dumas referred to the estate as La Fère, apparently forgetting that he’d previously stated that Athos’s domain of La Fère was a county in the province of Berry.
15. 15. THE TURMOIL OF THE FRONDE, OF WHICH WE FORMERLY ATTEMPTED TO RECOUNT THE FIRST PHASES: The first half of the multi-year rebellion of the Fronde formed the basis of the political intrigue between the musketeers and Mazarin in Twenty Years After and Blood Royal. See Note 45 below.
16. 16. LOUIS DE CONDÉ HAD MADE A FRANK AND SOLEMN RECONCILIATION WITH THE COURT: After serving Queen Regent Anne of Austria and Mazarin as their general in the first half of the Fronde (1648–1649), the Prince de Condé had gone over to the Nobles’ faction in the second Fronde (1650–1653), ultimately losing when the nobles were defeated, then defecting to Spain. He commanded Spanish troops against France until his defeat at the Battle of the Dunes in 1658, which led directly to the end of the war and the Treaty of the Pyrenees in the following year. After that treaty, Condé was rehabilitated and accepted back into the French Court by Mazarin and Queen Anne.
17. 17. PRINCIPLES OF LOYALTY TO THE MONARCHY, AS HE’D EXPOUNDED ONE DAY TO HIS SON IN THE VAULTS OF SAINT-DENIS: Athos swore Bragelonne to lifelong loyalty to the king in chapter 24 of Twenty Years After.
18. 18. MONSIEUR DE TURENNE: Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Marshal and Vicomte de Turenne (1611–1675) was, after the Prince de Condé, the other great French general of the mid–17th century. After Condé went over to the nobles’ faction in the Second Fronde, Turenne, his former associate, stayed with the royal party, thereafter repeatedly defeating Condé until the Fronde was concluded with a victory for the royals.
19. 19. A NOTEBOOK, ENTIRELY FILLED WITH HIS HANDWRITING: These are presumably the fictional memoirs of the Comte de La Fère, whom Dumas in his preface to The Three Musketeers had pretended to consult as a source for the story.
20. 20. GOOD OLD GRIMAUD: The laconic Grimaud has been Athos’s “lackey,” or manservant, since The Three Musketeers. Like the musketeers’ other lackeys, Grimaud appears throughout the Musketeers Cycle, and eventually one gets the impression that this stoic but caring and utterly reliable man was Dumas’s favorite of the four.
21. 21. MARSHAL D’ANCRE: Concino Concini, Maréchal d’Ancre (1575–1617) was a handsome Italian courtier who was a favorite of Queen Marie de Médicis. During Marie’s regency after her husband King Henri IV was assassinated, the arrogant Concini was showered with posts and preferment; he lorded it over the French nobility and they cordially hated him for it, no one more so than the youth King Louis XIII. Luynes, the young king’s favorite, engineered Louis’s rise to power (and his own) when he orchestrated Concini’s public assassination in 1617.
22. 22. THE SCHOOL OF RAPHAEL AND THE CARACCI: Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, “Raphael” (1483–1520) was a painter and architect of the Italian Renaissance, one of the “Old Masters” along with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The three brother artists of the Caracci family of Bologna in the late 16th century rejected the dull Mannerist style then prevailing and hearkened back to the more naturalistic painting of Raphael, founding an art school called the Accademia degli Incamminati that pointed toward the innovations of the Baroque era.
23. 23. MADAME LA MARÉCHALE D’ANCRE: Leonora Dori Galigaï (1571–1617), wife of Marshal d’Ancre (see Note 21), was like her husband a favorite of Queen Marie de Médicis. After the young Louis XIII had the marshal assassinated, his wife was arrested, charged with using witchcraft to enchant the queen, convicted, decapitated, and burned at the stake on the Place de Grève in Paris.
24. 24. BRONZINO: Agnolo di Cosimo, (1503–1572) called “Bronzino” probably for his dark skin tone, was a Florentine painter in the Italian Mannerist style, and the portrait painter of the ruling Medici family.
25. 25. ALBANI: Francesco Albani or Albano (1578–1660) of Bologna was a Baroque painter and student of the Caraccis (see Note 22) known for his bright, decorative paintings illustrating classical themes.
26. 26. ANACREONTIC SIRENS: The Greek poet Anacreon (5th century B.C.E.) was known for his songs celebrating love and conviviality, implying the queens on the sign looked amorously inviting.
27. 27. AS THEY REALLY DIVIDE INTO TWO RACES, THE BLACK AND THE WHITE: For Dumas, whose father was born a half-black slave in the Caribbean, the matter of race was complicated. Dumas burned with outrage at the injustices his father suffered in the Napoleonic years, and though he never pretended he wasn’t one-quarter black, the author was deeply hurt by the racist attacks of those Frenchmen who derided his “African” aspects. But young Alexandre had been raised in the bourgeois society of a small conservative French town, and though he flirted with rebellion and revolution as a young man, he craved even more the approval of the establishment. Deep down, he never really questioned the establishment’s fundamental belief in the overall superiority of the “white race.” Dumas was a man ahead of his time in many ways, but he could only go so far.
28. 28. A PHYSIOGNOMIST: By which Dumas means the innkeeper can read men’s personalities from their faces and expressions. Physiognomy was an ancient pseudoscience that was revived in 1643 by the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) that was often invoked to justify the prejudice of first impressions. Browne also brought the word “caricature” into the English language, which should give some indication of physiognomy’s lack of subtlety and nuance.
29. 29. KING’S MUSKETEERS: A company—later two—of elite soldiers, the musketeers were the personal guard of King Louis XIII and after him Louis XIV. They were founded in 1622 when a carbine-armed company of light horsemen was upgraded and given the new, heavier matchlock muskets as primary arms. Though their function was mainly ceremonial and to serve as royal bodyguards, they were sometimes deployed on the battlefield, where they fought either mounted as cavalry or dismounted and relying on their muskets. They are often depicted wearing their signature blue tabards with white crosses, which were adopted sometime in the 1630s.
30. 30. MONSIEUR DANGEAU: Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau (1638–1720) was a longtime ornament of the Court of Louis XIV and one of his early favorites, liked for his wit and because he was such a dedicated cardplayer.
31. 31. THE GORGET AND BUFFCOAT: A gorget was a semicircular plate of armor that covered the neck and upper chest; the buffcoat was originally an arming doublet worn under plate armor, but when full armor became obsolete due to firearms, it evolved into a leather jerkin typically made of thick ox or cowhide. The buffcoat of a gentleman of high rank was often heavily embroidered.
32. 32. PARRY: The old man who served as the loyal body servant to England’s King Charles I and then his heir was first introduced in Blood Royal. He is an invention of Dumas.
33. 33. PISTOLES: Pistole was a French word for a gold coin of the 16th and 17th centuries, usually Spanish in origin. The leading European states liked to mint their own coins, but gold was hard for them to come by—except for Spain, which flooded Europe with gold from its possessions in the New World, making the Spanish escudo the de facto base currency of European trade for two centuries. When Dumas’s characters refer to pistoles, they are mostly Spanish escudos. One pistole is worth about ten livres or three French crowns (écus).
34. 34. A CROWN THAT WAS ALREADY SLIPPING FROM THE VALOIS TO THE BOURBONS: France was ruled by the House of Valois from the 14th through 16th centuries; Henri III, who ruled from 1574 to 1579, was the final king of the Valois line, followed by Henri IV, the first of the Bourbons and grandfather of Louis XIV. Henri III “stooped to betrayal and assassination” when he had the Duc de Guise murdered—see Note 35 below.
35. 35. THE VERY SPOT WHERE THE DUC DE GUISE RECEIVED THE FIRST THRUST OF THE PONIARD: In the previous century, during the French Wars of Religion (roughly 1562–1598), the hardline Catholic members of the nobility, who wanted to crush the Protestant (or Huguenot) faction, were often held in check by the more moderate Catholics who were usually allied to the then-current Valois king. In 1576 a powerful and ambitious Catholic peer, Henri I, Duc de Guise, founded the Catholic League to organize opposition to the Huguenots and to King Henri III, who was regarded as too conciliatory toward the Protestants. The League was heavily armed, and more than a few battles were fought before Henri III had the Duc de Guise assassinated in 1588 in the Château de Blois.
36. 36. LA PORTE: Pierre de La Porte, Cloak-Bearer to the Queen (1603–1680) entered Queen Anne’s service in 1621 and was for decades one of her most trusted confidential servants. The 1839 edition of La Porte’s Memoirs was one of Dumas’s primary sources. La Porte will reappear in an important (albeit nonhistorical) role in the final book in the Musketeers Cycle, The Man in the Iron Mask.
37. 37. THE SCOTS… HANGED LORD MONTROSE, MY MOST DEVOTED SERVANT, BECAUSE HE WOULDN’T BECOME A COVENANTER: James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650), had been a Covenanter, or Scottish Presbyterian, and in the civil wars was initially opposed to Charles I before coming over to the Royalist side in 1644. One of the best of Charles I’s generals, he was a master organizer who won a number of battles but met defeat at Philiphaugh in 1645 and escaped to Norway. To support Charles II, he returned to Scotland in 1649, but was defeated, captured, and hanged by Parliament in Edinburgh—ironically, shortly before the Scottish government changed sides and declared for Charles II.
38. 38. RICHARD ABDICATED THE PROTECTORATE ON MAY 25, 1659: Richard Cromwell (1626–1712), son of Oliver, became Lord Protector when his father died in 1658, but he lacked both experience and will and held the position for less than a year before being forced by the military to step down.
39. 39. MONSIEUR DE RETZ: Jean-François Paul de Gondy or Gondi, Bishop Coadjutor of Paris and later Cardinal de Retz (1613–1679) was a political and militant churchman who was one of the most important leaders of the Fronde, and an important character in Twenty Years After and Blood Royal. He was awarded a cardinal’s hat in 1652 in an attempt to pacify him, but the gambit failed and he was exiled; Louis XIV eventually recalled him to Court in 1662.
40. 40. FOUR FRENCH GENTLEMEN DEVOTED TO MY FATHER: That is, d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who nearly saved Charles I from execution in the preceding volume of this series, Blood Royal.
41. 41. MONSIEUR DE BRIENNE: Henri-Auguste de Loménie, Comte de Brienne (1594–1666) was the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1643 to 1663, reporting to Mazarin. A diplomat from a family of diplomats, he was a stable and steadying influence for decades, plus his wife was a close friend of Queen Anne’s, which helped maintain him in his influential position—until Louis XIV, eager to flex his own diplomatic muscles, replaced him in 1663.
42. 42. CARDINAL RICHELIEU: Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu (1585–1642), Louis XIII’s incomparable prime minister, was one of the two most important Frenchmen of the 17th century, exceeded only by Louis XIV. Richelieu has been the subject of scores of biographies (including one by Dumas), and his life and works have been analyzed in excruciating detail, starting with his own Memoirs. His deeds were momentous, but it was his character and personality that interested Dumas, who loved historical figures who were great but also greatly flawed. After deploying Richelieu in The Three Musketeers as the worthy antagonist of his most enduring heroes, Dumas couldn’t resist revisiting him as a protagonist for The Red Sphinx. Though gone from the Musketeers Cycle after The Red Sphinx, Richelieu nonetheless casts a long shadow over the rest of the series, all the way through The Man in the Iron Mask.
43. 43. YOUR FATHER’S BROTHER-IN-LAW: A reminder that King Charles I had married Princess Henriette of France, sister of King Louis XIII.
44. 44. THE RUMP PARLIAMENT: After England’s Parliament was purged of royalists—half its number—by strongarm commanders loyal to Cromwell in 1648 (in order to try to convict Charles I), its remaining members in the House of Commons were referred to as the “Rump Parliament,” and so it was called until replaced by the “Convention Parliament” during the Restoration.
45. 45. THE FRONDE: A number of social and political conflicts combined in France to cause the messy and intermittent rebellion of the Fronde from 1648 to 1652. King Louis XIV, still in his minority, was too young to rule, and the realm was ruled by a queen regent and her foreign-born prime minister, a leadership regarded as weak by the opportunistic Grands of the high nobility.
46. 46. MAZARINADES: Dumas uses the term mazarinade to describe the cardinal’s political machinations, but it originated ten years earlier, during the Fronde, to describe the scurrilous pamphlets insulting Mazarin illicitly published during that political unrest. The cardinal responded by funding a flurry of opposing pamphlets supporting him, and eventually these became known as mazarinades as well. The pamphlets that publicized the cardinal’s deceits and diplomatic half-truths eventually lent their name to the machinations themselves.
47. 47. ARMORED IN TRIPLE BRASS, AS HORACE SAYS: In Book Three of Horace’s Odes, he refers to a Tower of Brass, with “locks, and bolts, and iron bars.” This might also be an allusion to Cromwell’s armored cavalry, who were known as the Ironsides.
48. 48. LOUIS XI: France’s King Louis XI (1423–1483), nicknamed “the Cunning” and “the Universal Spider,” was as renowned for his diplomatic brilliance as he was notorious for his lack of scruples.
49. 49. MONSIEUR DE BEAUFORT, MONSIEUR DE RETZ, OR MONSIEUR LE PRINCE: The three main leaders of the uprising of the Fronde: François de Vendôme, Duc de Beaufort (1616–1669) was the grandson of King Henri IV and his mistress Gabrielle d’Estrées, which made him a Prince of the Blood; Jean-François Paul de Gondy, Cardinal de Retz (1613–1679) was a political and militant churchman (see Note 39); Monsieur le Prince was the Prince de Condé (see Historical Characters).
50. 50. A BIRETTA OF VELVET: That is, the red velvet beret of a cardinal.
51. 51. PROUD PROFILE OF AN EAGLE FACING THE SUN: Dumas invokes Louis XIV’s later adoption of the appellation the Sun King.
52. 52. LIKE A FIGURE FROM CALLOT: Jacques Callot (1592–1635) was an artist, engraver, and printmaker from Lorraine who drew expressive portraits, street scenes of Paris, and images of battles and atrocities from the Thirty Years’ War. Dumas refers here to Callot’s famous sketch of a cavalier with a great plumed hat, which he also references as a description of the swashbuckler Etienne Latil in The Red Sphinx. (The sketch is reproduced in this editor’s edition of that title.)
53. 53. AN EPIC OF TASSO OR ARIOSTO: Italian authors of 16th-century chivalric romances; Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) wrote Jerusalem Delivered, a knightly epic of the First Crusade, while Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) was the celebrated author of Orlando Furioso, a romantic saga of Charlemagne and his paladins battling the Saracens.
54. 54. MESSIEURS DE RICHELIEU, DE BUCKINGHAM, DE BEAUFORT, AND DE RETZ: D’Artagnan’s mighty adversaries and allies in the events of The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After: Cardinal Richelieu (see Note 42); George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628); and the Frondeurs the Duc de Beaufort and the Cardinal de Retz (see Note 49).
55. 55. CAPTAIN OF THE MUSKETEERS: The position d’Artagnan refers to was technically Captain-Lieutenant of the King’s Musketeers since the ultimate rank of “Captain” notionally was held by the king himself. He is right about the prestige and precedent the position commanded at Court due to its propinquity to the Crown, though it was less prestigious as a battlefield rank in times of open warfare.
56. 56. MONSIEUR DE TRÉVILLE: Jean-Arnaud de Peyrer, Comte de Troisville or Tréville (1598–1672) was Captain-Lieutenant of the King’s Musketeers from 1634 to 1646, the first to hold that position, but had been forcibly retired by Mazarin when the cardinal temporarily disbanded the elite company.
57. 57. A MORNING LEVER: The lever (rising) was an official morning reception held at the bedside of every adult member of the royal House of France, and by other important members of Court as well. The relative importance of a person could be told by the quantity and quality of those who attended their lever; Louis’s here is described as a “pretense” to indicate that he is, as yet, insignificant in his own Court.
58. 58. MAY GOD FORGIVE HIS MURDERER: As related in Blood Royal, the king’s executioner was Monsieur Mordaunt, son of Milady de Winter, and his “murderer” was none other than Athos himself.
59. 59. BAZIN: Throughout the Musketeers Cycle, Bazin serves as the loyal lackey and assistant of Aramis. Just as the scheming Aramis is the least sympathetic of the musketeers, his servant, the pompous and selfish Bazin, is the least likeable of the lackeys, mainly serving as a butt for Dumas’s jokes about churchmen.
60. 60. OR DO I MEAN THE VICAR GENERAL?: A vicar general is a bishop’s deputy, so d’Artagnan is joking here about the ambitious Aramis’s ambitions for ecclesiastical rank. But his joke is short of the mark, as he soon finds.
61. 61. MOUSQUETON: The loyal servant of Porthos throughout the Musketeers Cycle. As related in The Three Musketeers, his birth name was Boniface, but his master renamed him with the more martial French word for musketoon, a large-caliber musket cut down to the length of a carbine.
62. 62. MONSIEUR RACAN: Honorat de Bueil, Seigneur de Racan (1589–1670) was a poet, playwright, and founding member of the Académie Française. The play Les Bergeries (1619) was his first great success. Mousqueton is quite wrong about the author having “died just last month.”
63. 63. PLANCHET: Like his counterparts who serve the three musketeers, d’Artagnan’s stalwart lackey appears throughout the novels of the Musketeers Cycle, eventually becoming less servant to the Gascon than friend and partner.
64. 64. USURY: Lending money out at interest was widely considered immoral; it was forbidden by the Church and was strictly controlled by law. Jews, who were outside of Catholic law, could engage in moneylending, but it was a perilous enterprise, as a Christian’s accusation of predatory lending could result in exile or execution.
65. 65. ENCOUNTERS ON THE BOULEVARD: Duels, in other words. For a Christian, to be accused of predatory usury was a serious matter, and Planchet was defending his reputation as an honest businessman.
66. 66. YOU NEVER LEFT THE PLACE ROYALE: During the Fronde, Planchet was an officer in the Frondeur militia, and as shown in Blood Royal, commanding a unit during the Battle of Charenton that stayed in Paris and missed all the fighting.
67. 67. LIKE TWO ATTORNEYS’ CLERKS: As a youth, Dumas had served an apprenticeship as a law clerk, and the experience was the source of many humorous scenes.
68. 68. MONSIEUR COQUENARD, THE FIRST HUSBAND OF MADAME LA BARONNE DU VALLON: In The Three Musketeers, Porthos’s mistress was Madame Coquenard, the wife of a wealthy, and elderly, Parisian attorney. After Monsieur Coquenard died, Porthos, elevated to the rank of Baron du Vallon, had married the wealthy widow.
69. 69. PERFIDIOUS ALBION: The French regarding their longtime adversaries the English as treacherous and deceitful is an attitude with a long history, and the phrase la perfide Albion has been attested as far back as the 13th century.
70. 70. DOUBLE-LOUIS: The louis d’or was a French gold coin introduced into circulation in 1640 by Louis XIII (who put his face and name on it). In size and weight it was an imitation of the Spanish double escudo (or “doubloon”), which was also the pistole so frequently mentioned in the Musketeer novels and the most common gold currency in Europe. A pistole was worth ten or eleven livres, or about three crowns (écus); the louis d’or was worth the same or slightly more. A double-louis, therefore, was a doubloon.
71. 71. REMINISCENT OF HIS ARRIVAL AT THE INN OF THE JOLLY MILLER IN MEUNG: A reference to Chapter I of The Three Musketeers, and the commotion caused by the young d’Artagnan’s arrival at an inn.
72. 72. NEPTUNE PRONOUNCING THE QUOS EGO: In Virgil’s Aeneid, Neptune quells the gales of the rebellious Aeolus with this famous curtailed threat, basically Latin for “Why, I ought to…!”
73. 73. THE PIRATES OF TUNIS: The so-called “Barbary Pirates” of North Africa, who operated out of the ports of Tunis, Tripoli, Rabat, and Algiers, crewed their fast galleys with slaves taken from European ships and shore towns.
74. 74. SAILOR OF THE PONANT: The Ponant was an archaic French term for the Western Sea, i.e., the Atlantic, and was the opposite of the Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean.
75. 75. WILLIAM II OF NASSAU, STADTHOLDER OF HOLLAND: Dumas has his dates and Dutch rulers wrong here: William II, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the United Provinces, had died in 1650 and been succeeded by Jan de Witt, who ruled the Dutch Republic until 1672. It is true, however, that Charles II had long been living as an exile on the Dutch coast.
76. 76. GENERAL LAMBERT: John Lambert (1619–1684) was an officer in the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell who rose to the rank of general. Following the victory at Worcester, he was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland and thereafter was a prominent politician, leading the military wing of the Protectorate, often in rivalry with Cromwell. After Cromwell’s death he led the faction that forced Cromwell’s son, Richard, to step down, outplayed all his competitors, shut the members out of parliament, and assumed the rank of Major-General of the Armies. He then set out north with his troops to challenge his only remaining rival, General Monck.
77. 77. AT COLDSTREAM, ON THE TWEED: Dumas makes it sound like Newcastle and Coldstream are next to each other when in fact they’re fifty miles apart, but the advance elements of the two armies were close enough for near encounters.
78. 78. NEWCASTLE ABBEY: This abbey, and its very convenient location, are Dumas’s inventions.
79. 79. THE MUSKETEERS’ FORMER HOST: Dumas named him in Blood Royal as Señor Perez, though without giving his inn a name, which he calls the Hartshorn here. Dumas wrote quickly in his rush to get chapters out for weekly publication, and in sequels didn’t always take the time to look back at what he’d written before.
80. 80. THE MEMOIRS OF D’AUBIGNÉ: Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552–1630) was a Huguenot supporter of King Henri IV who wrote a memoir published in 1729 with which Dumas was doubtless familiar. Agrippa was the grandfather of Françoise d’Aubigné who appears in Twenty Years After and went on to become Madame Scarron and then Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s final mistress and secret wife.
81. 81. LUYNES, BELLEGARDE, AND BASSOMPIERRE: Favorites of Louis XIII who were rewarded with position and privilege, though Athos’s compliment in comparing d’Artagnan to them has perhaps an unintended sting to it, as all three ended their lives out of favor and in disgrace.
82. 82. EXCEPT FOR MONTROSE: See Note 37.
83. 83. KNIGHT OF THE GARTER: The Most Noble Order of the Garter was an English knightly order founded in 1348 by Edward III; it was highly prestigious, and only the monarch could induct new members into its ranks.
84. 84. CHEVALIER DU SAINT-ESPRIT: The Ordre du Saint-Esprit, Order of the Holy Spirit, was a French knightly order established by King Henri III in 1578 during the Wars of Religion as a counterweight to the Order of the Golden Fleece, whose members largely supported the fractious nobility of the Catholic League.
85. 85. ORDER OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE: A Catholic knightly order established in 1430 by Philippe III, Duke of Burgundy, and later adopted by the Hapsburg dynasty of Spain and Austria as their highest order of chivalry. There could never be more than fifty living members of the order at a time.
86. 86. THE KING OF FRANCE… ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RECENT MARRIAGE: Dumas had his dates slightly off: Charles II entered London on May 29, 1660, and Louis XIV married the Spanish Infanta Maria Teresa shortly thereafter in France, on June 9, 1660.
87. 87. VICEROY OF IRELAND AND SCOTLAND: Dumas overreaches a bit; Monck was named Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (but not Scotland) in August 1660.
88. 88. FABRICIUS: Gaius Fabricius Luscinus was a Roman patrician of the 3rd century B.C.E. who was renowned for his frugality and incorruptibility.
89. 89. THE SECRET WIFE OF MONSIEUR DE MAZARIN: It was widely rumored that Queen Anne and Cardinal Mazarin had been secretly married in a private service, but there is no solid historical confirmation of this.
90. 90. THIS PREPARATION FOR COMBAT, WHICH THE ROMANS CALLED ACCINCTION: in Latin, accinctio means to gird on one’s weapons, to arm up.
91. 91. THE QUALITIES OF FABIUS AND HANNIBAL: That is, the complementary skills of two opponents, Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca (247–182 B.C.E.), a wily aggressor, and Roman general Fabius Cunctator (280–203 B.C.E.), who resisted Hannibal’s advance with innovative delaying tactics.
92. 92. IRUS: In The Odyssey, Irus (Latin) or Arnaeus (Greek) is a poor Ithacan beggar who makes the mistake of challenging another beggar who’s new in town, and who unfortunately for Irus is Odysseus in disguise. This ends badly for Irus.
93. 93. THE POSTILION: The post horse system was a way of hiring horses by stages, turning in a rented horse at a “post” and hiring another one, if necessary, for the next stage. Packhorses, carriages, and wagons could also be rented by post, usually coming with a hired driver who rode the lead horse and was called the postilion.
94. 94. THAT GOOD OLD WINE OF ANJOU THAT ONE DAY NEARLY COST US SO DEARLY: A reference to Chapter XLII of The Three Musketeers, “The Anjou Wine,” in which Milady de Winter sent d’Artagnan an entire case of the vintage—all poisoned.
95. 95. PALAIS ROYAL: Cardinal Richelieu started building his Palais Cardinal in 1633 and completed it in 1639. When Richelieu died in 1642, he willed his grand Paris residence to the king, and it was renamed the Palais Royal. Upon the death of Louis XIII, Queen Anne moved her family—including Cardinal Mazarin—from the Louvre into the more modern Palais Royal.
96. 96. THE COMTESSE DE SOISSONS: The cardinal’s niece, Olympe de Mancini (1638–1708), Marie’s elder sister, had been a countess of high rank since marrying the near-royal Comte de Soissons in 1657.
97. 97. HE, WHO NEVER PREVENTED ANYONE FROM SINGING, PROVIDING THEY PAID: A reference to a famous remark Mazarin is said to have made during the Fronde about the satirical songs of the Frondeurs, quoted by Dumas in Twenty Years After: “If they sing the song, they’ll pay the piper.”
98. 98. MY FATHER: The Comte de Guiche’s father was Antoine III, Duc de Gramont or Grammont (1604–1678). A capable military commander, he was made a marshal in 1641, and for his victories—and because he was married to one of Richelieu’s nieces—he was elevated to the peerage and became Duc de Gramont in 1643.
99. 99. THE DAYS WHEN MONSIEUR CROMWELL WAS SENDING US CUTTHROATS AS ENVOYS: Mazarin refers to the events of Twenty Years After in which Cromwell sent the murderous Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, to Mazarin as a diplomatic messenger.
100. 100. THE PLACE DE GRÈVE: In Paris, the broad square on the Right Bank of the Seine in front of the Hôtel de Ville where convicted criminals were publicly tortured and executed, commoners by hanging and nobles by decapitation.
101. 101. BOILEAU’S SATIRES: Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) was a French satirist and critic of poetry; he mocked Guénaud for supposedly poisoning his patients with antimony in his Satire IV (1664).
102. 102. HE TREATED THE PATIENT AS A TURK TREATS A MOOR: In other words, without any special consideration for his status. In Don Quixote Cervantes complained that the Turks treated the Spanish Moors as badly as they treated Christians.
103. 103. I’M BARELY FIFTY-TWO: Mazarin shades his age downward; born in 1602, the minister was fifty-eight.
104. 104. HE WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLDER THAN LOUIS XIV: Colbert was nearly twenty years older than the king, but Dumas often played fast and loose with the ages of historical characters to suit his dramatic purposes; here he made Colbert slightly younger to match his depiction as ambitious and aspiring.
105. 105. THE CHÂTELET: A medieval keep in central Paris on the Right Bank at the Pont au Change, the Grand Châtelet contained the offices of the Provost of Paris and the city’s civil and criminal courts.
106. 106. MICHEL LE TELLIER, THE SECRETARY OF STATE: Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Barbezieux (1603–1685) was a protégé of Mazarin who served as Secretary of State for War from 1643 until the minister’s death. He made the transition to continue to serve under Louis XIV and was appointed Chancellor in 1677.
107. 107. THE THEATINE FATHER: The Theatines were a monastic order dedicated to reform and austerity founded in Italy in the 16th century. Cardinal Mazarin sponsored their expansion in France, and in 1644 gave them permission to build a Theatine church across from the Louvre.
108. 108. AS THE SON OF A FISHERMAN: It was a common slander that Mazarin was a mere son of a fisherman, but though the cardinal plays along with the joke, it was just exaggerated wordplay on the fact that his family came from Piscina.
109. 109. ALL FOUND IN THE CHRONICLE OF HAOLANDER: Mazarin did make overblown claims about his ancestors, but the Chronicle of Haolander is an invention of Dumas.
110. 110. CASALE: The Siege of Casale in northern Italy was one of the key episodes in the War of Mantuan Succession, fought between France and Spain on the territory of Savoy. Mazarin first made his mark there as a negotiator and envoy for Rome, and you’ll find the entire affair described in detail in Dumas’s The Red Sphinx.
111. 111. MONSIEUR DE BEAUFORT, WHOM I TREATED SO HARSHLY IN THE DUNGEONS OF VINCENNES: Mazarin’s relations with the Duc de Beaufort, and the duke’s escape from Vincennes, are recounted in Twenty Years After.
112. 112. TO ATTEND HIS COUCHER: The coucher was an official evening reception held at the bedside of every adult member of the royal House of France. Like the morning lever, the relative importance of a person could be told by the quantity and quality of those who attended their coucher.
113. 113. HIS CONFIDANT SAINT-SIMON: Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755), ornament of the late-reign Court of Louis XIV and son of that Saint-Simon who was a favorite of Louis XIII (and who appears in The Red Sphinx) was a mediocre diplomat and soldier whose fame rests primarily on his voluminous memoirs, a primary source for anyone who studies the French Court in the early 18th century.
114. 114. CANCER THAT WAS EVEN THEN GNAWING AT HER BREAST: Six years after this scene Queen Anne would die from breast cancer, though it’s not clear that it would already have been afflicting her in 1660.
115. 115. FROM VAUX TO THE LOUVRE: A distance of almost forty miles, or sixty-some kilometers.
116. 116. UNDER THE GOLDEN SUN OF THIS ROYAL LUXURY GROWS THE LUXURY OF INDIVIDUALS, THE SOURCE OF WEALTH FOR THE PEOPLE: What we now call the “trickle-down” theory of economics is an old idea and has a long history among the apologists of both monarchy and capitalism.
117. 117. THE SAME TONE WHICH MARIE ANTOINETTE MUCH LATER SAID, “YOU TELL ME THAT MUCH?”: “Vous m’en direz tant!” An exclamation from Queen Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) in a similar situation, as attributed in the memoirs of Lucien Bonaparte.
118. 118. VINCENNES: The Château de Vincennes, a grim 14th-century royal fortress just east of Paris, was used by the French monarchy as a refuge in wartime and as a prison for their enemies in times of peace.
119. 119. THAT SUBLIME JEST FOR WHICH THE SAD GRUMBLER BOILEAU DARED TO CRITICIZE MOLIÈRE: Scapin is the roguish lackey of his reprobate master Don Juan in Molière’s 1665 play of that name; at the end of the play, once his master has been dragged down to Hell, Scapin complains that he never even got paid, a remark the critic Boileau considered vulgar.
120. 120. FLORA BY TITIAN: A masterpiece of feminine beauty by the great Renaissance painter dating from around 1515. In the 17th century it was mainly passed around between various royal Hapsburg collectors, so putting it in Mazarin’s possession in 1660 is rather doubtful. Today it’s in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
121. 121. THE HUNDRED SWISS: The Cent-Suisses, a company of mercenary soldiers from Switzerland, had served the French Crown as a ceremonial palace guard since established by Louis XI in 1471.
122. 122. A TEN-GUN FLUTE: The flute (Dutch: fluyt) was a medium-sized and relatively nimble merchant ship of the 16th through 18th centuries; as Colbert alludes, they were often mounted with guns to fend off pirates and privateers.
123. 123. SOMEONE SCRATCHED AT THE DOOR: At the French Court in the 17th century, it was considered proper etiquette for inferiors to scratch at the door to request admittance rather than knock.
124. 124. BELLE-ÎLE-EN-MER: Belle-Île is a medium-sized island in the Atlantic about ten miles off the south coast of Brittany, renowned for its mild summer clime and the dramatic cliffs along its Côte sauvage.