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Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (French: [tɔmɑ alɛksɑ̃dʁ dymɑ davi də la pajət(ə)ʁi]; known as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas; 25 March 1762 – 26 February 1806) was a Creole general, from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in Revolutionary France. Along with his French contemporary Joseph Serrant and other notable brothers in arms in the French Army Toussaint Louverture from Saint-Domingue, Abram Petrovich Gannibal from Imperial Russia and Władysław Franciszek Jabłonowski from Poland, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is notable as a man of African descent (in Dumas's case, through his mother) leading European troops as a general officer. All four commanded as officers in the French Army and apart from Gannibal, who was only captain and engineer-sapper in the Army of Louis XV during his formative years, they all gained their general ranks in the French Army, about four decades after Gannibal had done the same in Russia. Yet Dumas was the first person of color in the French military to become brigadier general, divisional general, and general-in-chief of a French army. Born in Saint-Domingue, Thomas-Alexandre was the son of Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and of Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved woman of African descent. He was born into slavery because of his mother's status, but his father took him to France in 1776 and had him educated. Slavery had been illegal in metropolitan France since 1315 and thus any slave would be freed de facto by being in France. His father helped him enter the French military. Dumas played a large role in the French Revolutionary Wars. Having entered the military in 1786 at age 24 as a private, by age 31 he commanded 53,000 troops as the General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps. Dumas's victory in opening the high Alpine passes in 1794 enabled the French to initiate their Second Italian Campaign against the Austrian Empire. During the battles in Italy, Austrian troops nicknamed Dumas the Schwarzer Teufel ("Black Devil", Diable Noir in French). in 1797. The French—notably Napoleon—nicknamed him "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol" (after a hero who had saved ancient Rome) for defeating a squadron of enemy troops at a bridge over the Eisack River in Clausen (today Klausen, or Chiusa, Italy) in March 1797. Dumas participated in the French attempt to conquer Egypt and the Levant during the Expédition d’Égypte of 1798-1801 when he was a commander of the French cavalry forces. On the march from Alexandria to Cairo, he clashed verbally with the Expedition's supreme commander Napoleon Bonaparte, under whom he had served in the Italian campaigns. In March 1799, Dumas left Egypt on an unsound vessel, which was forced to run aground in the southern Italian Kingdom of Naples, where he was taken prisoner and thrown into a dungeon. He languished there until the spring of 1801. Returning to France after his release, he and his wife had a son, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), who would become one of France's most widely-read authors. The son's most famous literary characters were inspired by his father. Ancestry Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie was born on 25 March 1762 in Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) to French nobleman Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved African woman he owned. Father Noble pedigree Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, born 1714, was the oldest of three sons of the Marquis Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie and Jeanne-Françoise Paultre (or Pautre) de Dominon. The Davy de la Pailleteries were provincial Norman aristocrats whose wealth was in decline. The family had acquired the title of "lords" (seigneurs) by 1632. The French kingdom granted the title "marquis" to the family by 1708. Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie ("Antoine") had two younger brothers, Charles Anne Edouard and Louis François Thérèse. All three were educated at a military school and pursued careers as officers in the French military. They first served during the War of the Polish Succession. Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, who reached the rank of colonel, saw action at the Siege of Philippsburg in 1734. Career in Saint-Domingue In 1732, Antoine's younger brother Charles had been given a military posting in Saint-Domingue, a French colony in the Caribbean that generated high revenues from its sugarcane plantations, worked by African slave labour. In 1738, Charles left the military to become a sugar planter in that colony; he married Anne-Marie Tuffé, a rich local French Creole widow, and took over her estate. That year Antoine also left the Army and joined his brother and sister-in-law in Saint-Domingue. He lived with them and worked at the plantation until 1748. In that year, the two brothers quarrelled violently, after which Antoine left Charles's plantation, taking his three personal slaves with him. At this point, Antoine broke off contact with his brother and his family for thirty years, although they both lived on the same small island. Antoine made a living in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue, as a coffee and cacao planter, under the assumed name of "Antoine de l'Isle". At some point during these years, Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie purchased the slave woman Marie-Cessette "for an exorbitant price" and made her his concubine. In 1762, she gave birth to their mixed-race son Thomas-Alexandre. During her time with Antoine, she also bore him two or three daughters. Antoine's mother, the Marquise Jeanne-Françoise, died in 1757 and his father, the Marquis Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, died in 1758. Charles (although younger than Antoine) returned to Normandy to claim the title of Marquis and the family château. The British blockade of French shipping during the Seven Years' War reduced Charles' income from sugar exports, so he tried to smuggle the commodity out of Saint-Domingue from his plantation. He used a wharf in the neutral border territory (and tiny island) of Monte Cristo (today Monte Christi, Dominican Republic). (Some historians argue that this island inspired Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.) Charles died of gout in 1773; Louis, the youngest of the Davy de la Pailleterie brothers, died three months later. He had served a 15-day sentence for being involved in selling defective weapons to the French military (a famous scandal at the time known as the Invalides Trial [le procès des Invalides]). Two years after the death of both his younger brothers, Antoine returned to Europe. Mother Marie-Cessette Dumas, described as a "great matriarch to a saga of distinguished men", was an enslaved woman and concubine of African descent owned by the Marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. They resided together at a plantation called La Guinaudée (Guinodée), near Jérémie (formerly in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti) until shortly before Antoine's departure in 1775. He sold Marie-Cessette Dumas, their other two children, and her daughter by .... Discover the Alexandre Dumas Unknown popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Alexandre Dumas Unknown books.