Good morning (Its 9am here) or good evening/afternoon to the person reading this at the other side.
I recently finished watching this video on youtube called, Napoleon and the Legendary Black General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas it was a really well made video and I was enjoying every minute of that video. However, they're things I have never learned about and well, some of the thing's Napoleon had said was very hostile to the general who was loyal to the cause and ideals of which Napoleon preached to our people(Well French people mostly) back then. I just want to say that I consider Napoleon my favorite leader, a hero so to speak but towards the end of the video, was a different face, an individual I did not recognize in Napoleon, for example, when Thomas-Alexandre wrote to Napoleon and nothing. When Alexandre died, his wife, wrote to Napoleon to where he responded with such hate. I don't understand why he also went against his ideals by bringing back policies that would break the unity of the French people.
The video though really great, was a slap to the face, if I can use that expression. But what about this general did Napoleon dislike about him so much, despite showing loyalty and nothing but?
This was posted in history but didn't get anything, Id really appreciate your help!
What can be established with a relatively good degree of certainty, based on information gleaned from the memoirs and letters of the parties involved, is the following. The career of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas had begun a few years before the Revolution (he was already 27 in 1789). Fighting for the Revolutionary army, corporal Dumas rose through the ranks, and was appointed general in 1793. He was a loyal officer of the French Republic, and became an experienced warrior who fought bravely in several campaigns, notably in Tyrol and in Italy, where he was appointed military governor. His physical strength, his courage, and his military prowess had become legendary.
Then, in May 1798, Bonaparte made Dumas commander of the cavalry of the Army of Orient as the French army was set to conquer Egypt. This was a rather prestigious position, which shows that Dumas' loyalty and military expertise was well trusted by his commander-in-chief. The expedition was ill-conceived from the start: French soldiers arrived badly prepared and the logistics were lacking. The march from Alexandria to Cairo proved deadly, as men died of thirst, exhaustion, sickness, and even suicide, or were picked up one by one by the guerrilla to be tortured and killed. What was supposed to be a righteous war to liberate the Egyptians from the Mamelukes turned into a nightmare, as the French army faced an hostile population, and ended up looting villages and killing civilians. While camped in the village of Damanhur, between Alexandria and Cairo, several generals, including Dumas, Desaix, Lannes, and Murat had a private meeting where they spoke freely about their dissatisfaction with the way things were going. According his son, the writer Alexandre Dumas, the general Dumas was depressed.
A deep disgust for all things had taken hold of him along with a disgust for life.
What was exactly said during this meeting depends on what people later told in their memoirs - as usual in Napoleonic stories there were many witnesses and as many versions - but what is sure is that news of the meeting arrived to Bonaparte, who was definitely not happy.
Again, there are different versions of what happened later. According to Emmanuel de Las Cases, who was the secretary of Napoléon in Saint Helena, Bonaparte went to see the generals and said to one of them (unnamed but believed to be Dumas because of his remarkable stature):
You have preached sedition. Beware that I don’t fulfill my duty, for your six feet and one inch would not prevent you from being shot in two hours.
According to another companion of Napoléon on Saint Helena, Gaspard Gourgaud, the Emperor told him:
Regiments refused to march! I was firm, I attacked a negro general, Dumas, whom I threatened to have shot.
In July 1798, the Battle of the Pyramids saw the victory of the French army over the Mamelukes, but it was followed in August by the disaster of Abukir, where Admiral Nelson destroyed the French fleet, including Napoléon's giant flagship The Orient. By then, the campaign of Egypt was going nowhere. In October 1798, Dumas helped Bonaparte to put down a revolt in Cairo, charging the rebels himself (according to some versions).
But Dumas and other officers were by now fully disillusioned with the campaign: sometimes in the early months of 1799, he asked Bonaparte for the permission to leave, and the Commander-in-chief let him go. This is when other memorialists place the final meeting between Dumas and Bonaparte.
René-Nicolas Desgenettes, an army doctor (cited by Reiss, 2012), says that he got the story from Napoléon himself, who told him that he had told Dumas that if he
had been unlucky enough to notify me not to go further than Cairo, I would have shot you with no further formality. [...] When that had been accomplished, I would have had you tried by the grenadiers of the army, and I would have covered your memory with opprobrium.
Then, according to Napoléon, Dumas started to sob, and the Emperor, recalling the general's previous exploits, "felt at peace right away".
Another version, the most heroic, was told by the general's son in his memoirs. The younger Dumas barely knew his father, who died when he was three, but he had help from former officers who knew him, notably General Dermoncourt. According to his son, Bonaparte and Dumas had the following lively exchange, which is, frankly, too literate to be true and sounds like a scene in a theatre play:
“Thus, Dumas, you divide your mind into two parts: you put France on one side and me on the other.”
“I believe that the interests of France should come before those of a man, however great this man may be… I believe that the fortune of a nation cannot be subdued to that of an individual.”
“Thus, you are ready to separate yourself from me?”
“It is possible, but I don’t agree with dictators, not Sulla any more than Caesar.”
Let's remember that this Alexandre Dumas was primarily a writer, and not exactly the most reliable narrator.
Dumas left in May 1799 but he was captured on this way home and imprisoned, only returning in June 1801, a sick and broken man. Napoléon eventually left Egypt in September, abandoning his army and letting Kléber deal with the unruly Egyptians. Back in France, Dumas tried to offer his services to the Emperor - which shows that, whatever happened with Napoléon, Dumas was still something of a believer - but he did not receive an answer. After his death in 1806, his widow tried for years to obtain the pension due to her late husband. This is when his son, in his memoirs, tells that the emperor stamped his foot and said, “I forbid you ever to speak to me of that man.” But again, the younger Alexandre is anything but reliable.
So what happened? It is clear that Dumas, a legendary soldier, had the trust of Bonaparte before the campaign of Egypt. It is also clear that the relation floundered as soon as the campaign was in disarray and that Dumas, among other generals, started voicing his opposition. Nevertheless, despite the various personal threats reported in the testimonies, Bonaparte let Dumas go home. The fact that, years later, Napoléon recalled the "seditious" meeting in Damanhur and was still angry about Dumas' part in this, shows that he had felt betrayed by a man he had personally appointed at a top position. For his son, Napoléon had really came to hate his father, to the point that Dumas's heroic charge during the Cairo revolt was erased in the painting by Girodet, where he is replaced by a blond man, and that himself, as the son of a disgraced man, was refused help when he applied to military and civilian schools.
For Reiss, it is also possible that the drastic change in France's racial politics in the early 1800s played a part, as the emancipation of 1794 was rescinded and slavery reestablished in the French Caribbean (resulting eventually in the loss of Saint-Domingue). Mixed-race marriages, like that of Alexandre, were banned. Segregation returned in the French army, and a black general - and, worse, a popular one - was no longer fashionable.
It is finally possible that Napoléon just no longer cared about Dumas, let alone about his family, and that, just like he had left his army and that poor loyal Kléber fend for themselves in Egypt, he had little concern for a man who was no longer of value for him.
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