D'Artagnan could not then have been at the siege of La Rochelle, but from the "Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan," of which Dumas writes in his preface, we learn of his feats at arms at Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, and Lille, all places where once and again Dumas placed the action of the novels.
The real D'Artagnan died, sword in hand, "in the imminent deadly breach" at Maestricht, in 1673. He served, too, under Prince Rupert in the Civil War, and frequently visited England, where he had an _affaire_ with a certain Milady, which is again reminiscent of the pages of Dumas.
This D'Artagnan in the flesh married Charlotte Anne de Chanlecy, and the last of his direct descendants died in Paris in the latter years of the eighteenth century, but collateral branches of the family appear still to exist in Gascony, and there was a certain Baron de Batz, a Béarnais, who made a daring attempt to save Marie Antoinette in 1793.
The inception of the whole work in Dumas' mind, as he says, came to him while he was making research in the "Bibliothèque Royale" for his history of Louis XIV.
Thus from these beginnings grew up that series of romances which gave undying fame to Alexandre Dumas, and to the world of readers a series of characters and scenes associated with the mediæval history of France, which, before or since, have not been equalled.
Alexandre Dumas has been described as something of the soldier, the cook, and the traveller, more of the journalist, diplomatist, and poet, and, more than all else, the dramatist, romancer, and _raconteur_. He himself has said that he was a "veritable Wandering Jew of literature."
His versatility in no way comprised his abilities, and, while conceit and egoism played a not unimportant share in his make-up, his affability--when he so chose--caused him to be ranked highly in the estimation of his equals and contemporaries. By the cur-dogs, which always snap at the heels of a more splendid animal, he was not ranked so high.
Certain of these were for ever twitting him publicly of his creed, race, and foibles. It is recorded by Theodore de Bauville, in his "Odes," that one Jacquot hailed Dumas in the open street with a ribald jeer, when, calmly turning to his detractor, Dumas said, simply: "Hast thou dined to-day, Jacquot?" Then it was that this said Jacquot published the slanderous brochure, "_La Maison Dumas et Cie_," which has gone down as something considerable of a sensation in the annals of literary history; so much so, indeed, that most writers who have had occasion to refer to Dumas' literary career have apparently half-believed its accusations, which, truth to tell, may have had some bearing on "things as they were," had they but been put forward as a bit of temperate criticism rather than as a sweeping condemnation.