The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers
Written the year before with the same collaborator, Auguste Maquet, and the same method: real reigns, invented gentlemen, a queen with a secret.
Read our takeQueen Margot
Alexandre Dumas
Queen Margot
A royal wedding at the Louvre, a massacre six days later, and two young men who try to kill each other and end up friends: Dumas's Paris of 1572.
- 1845
- Savage
- Atmospheric
- plot-driven
- dark
- political
About Alexandre Dumas
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeQueen Margot opens on the night of 18 August 1572, at the Louvre, with the wedding party of Marguerite de Valois, sister of King Charles IX, and Henri de Navarre, the young leader of the French Protestants. Six days later the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois rings and the Catholic party kills the Protestants of Paris in the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day. Two provincial gentlemen ride into the city that evening: Lerac de la Mole, a Protestant from Provence, and Annibal de Coconnas, a Catholic from Piedmont. By morning one has stabbed the other in the queen's own bedroom. Around them Alexandre Dumas sets the queen mother Catherine de Médicis and her poisons, and a king who would rather write verse and hunt than rule. Two jealous royal brothers wait their turn, and a husband and wife agree to be allies rather than lovers. The novel ran in daily parts in the Paris newspaper La Presse from 25 December 1844 and came out as a book in 1845.[1][2][3]
The story, in more detail
The historical frame is real. Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis, married Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572. The wedding brought the Protestant leaders to Paris, and on 24 August the Catholics began the killing that is known as the St Bartholomew's Day massacre. Alexandre Dumas keeps those dates and the royal family as history records them: Charles IX on the throne, his mother behind it, his brothers the duc d'Anjou and the duc d'Alençon waiting their turn. He then fills the palace with a plot of his own about who will inherit the crown.[4]
The two young men at the centre also existed. Annibal de Coconnat, a Piedmontese gentleman, and Joseph de La Mole plotted in 1574 on behalf of the duc d'Alençon and were beheaded together on the Place de Grève on 30 April that year. Dumas takes their names, their friendship and their execution, and invents almost everything in between. The inn on the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, the wounds, the duel under the gibbet and the love affairs with the queen and the duchesse de Nevers are his. The Larousse encyclopedia's entry on Coconnat says plainly that the two men inspired the novel.[5]
Dumas wrote the book with Auguste Maquet, the former schoolteacher who did the historical research and drafting for most of his big novels of the 1840s. Project Gutenberg lists Maquet as co-author of this text, and both names stand on the stage version of 1847. English readers have met the novel under two titles. The public-domain nineteenth-century translation quoted throughout was printed in New York in 1900 as Marguerite de Valois. Oxford World's Classics prints it as La Reine Margot, and the 1994 film made Queen Margot the name most people know.[6][1][7]
The full plot
On her wedding night Marguerite de Valois receives two visitors. The first, by rope ladder, is her lover Henri de Guise, from whom she takes back and burns one dangerous letter. The second is her new husband Henri de Navarre, who guesses that someone is hidden in her closet and proposes an alliance instead of a marriage. She accepts. Six days later the massacre begins. La Mole, wounded by Coconnas at Admiral Coligny's gate, runs along the river to the Louvre, gives the password and collapses on the queen's carpet. She hides him, dresses his wounds herself and stops her brother the duc d'Alençon from finding him. Henri de Navarre survives because Charles IX, arquebuse in hand, offers him death, mass or the Bastille, and he chooses the mass.[1]
The court rides out to Montfaucon to look at Coligny's headless body on the gibbet. La Mole and Coconnas fight a duel there and are carried back, half dead, in the cart of Maître Caboche, the Paris executioner. Nursed in the same closet at the Hôtel de Guise, the two enemies become inseparable friends. Marguerite takes La Mole as her lover and her friend Henriette de Nevers takes Coconnas, in a little house with two doors on the Rue Cloche-Percée and the Rue Tizon. Meanwhile Catherine de Médicis reads the future in the brains of black hens and finds the letter H four times: Henri de Navarre will reign. She sets out to kill him, first with a poisoned lip salve meant for his mistress Madame de Sauve, then with a treatise on hawking whose pages are stuck together with arsenic.[1]
Henri de Navarre saves Charles IX from a wild boar at the hunt at Bondy, and the king, for the first time in his life, feels gratitude. Henri plans an escape to his own kingdom with the Protestant captain De Mouy, and the duc d'Alençon, who wants the throne of Navarre for himself, carries his mother's poisoned book to Henri's room. Henri never opens it. Charles IX finds it there, takes it away to read, and wets his thumb to part every page.[1]
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Charles IX's greyhound Actéon dies with paper from the book in its teeth, and the king understands what he has swallowed. He makes René, his mother's Florentine perfumer, sign a confession that the book came from Catherine de Médicis. Henri's escape is betrayed, La Mole and Coconnas are arrested in the forest of Vincennes and tried for sorcery and treason. La Mole is tortured with the boot and confesses nothing. Coconnas is spared by Caboche, who drives wedges of leather instead of oak, and uses the sham to dictate evidence against the duc d'Alençon. A rescue from the prison chapel fails. On the morning after, the two friends are beheaded on the Place Saint-Jean-en-Grève before the Hôtel de Ville, Coconnas carrying La Mole up the steps and kissing his severed head before kneeling himself.
That night Marguerite and Henriette go by litter to the headsman's tower, where Marguerite puts La Mole's head in a bag embroidered with pearls and Henriette wraps Coconnas's in her cloak. Marguerite then dresses in new jewels and goes to her brother's ball. At Vincennes on 30 May 1574 Charles IX, sweating blood, makes his mother burn the book in front of him and names Henri de Navarre regent. Catherine calls in the guards; René, changing sides, leads Henri out by a secret corridor as the king dies. The duc d'Anjou gallops into the courtyard from Poland and is proclaimed Henri III. A year later Henri de Navarre is back in Paris in secret to see Madame de Sauve, and De Mouy kills the assassin Maurevel in the Rue Saint-Honoré. Marguerite is in Navarre with her husband, sad, and the head is in her oratory.
Themes and analysis
The bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and the Paris the book is built on
Alexandre Dumas keeps time in this novel with one church bell. The first sentence sets the wedding feast at the Louvre on Monday 18 August 1572, and the second tells the reader that the streets are normally empty once Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois has struck nine. The crowd that night fills the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain and the quay under the palace walls. The Duc de Guise hears the same clock strike one as he leaves the Hôtel de Guise for the queen's rope ladder. Six days later, in the inn on the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, the assassin Maurevel counts eleven strokes before he tells Coconnas that the killing will start when he hears the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Coligny's house stands on the Rue de Béthizy, a continuation of the same street, and that is where the Duc de Guise waits for his body to be thrown from the balcony.
The rest of the book's Paris is drawn with the same care for names a reader could still walk. La Mole rides in by the Porte Saint-Marcel, crosses the Place Maubert, the Petit Pont and the Pont Notre-Dame, and stops at the sign of La Belle Étoile. René the perfumer has his shop on the Pont Saint-Michel, and Catherine de Médicis leaves it at the end of the Rue de la Barillerie. The lovers' house with two doors opens on the Rue Cloche-Percée and the Rue Tizon, off the Rue Saint-Antoine. Coligny's corpse hangs at the gibbet of Montfaucon, the royal party rides out through the Faubourg Saint-Denis to see it, and the two friends die on the Place Saint-Jean-en-Grève with the steps of the Hôtel de Ville for an amphitheatre. Dumas even points out the small tower at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie and the Rue Mouton, from which the two women watch, and says it still stands.
Chapters that end on a whisper: the daily-parts novel
La Presse announced on 25 December 1844 that it was beginning that day the publication of La Reine Margot, a novel by Alexandre Dumas, and promised new subscribers every instalment that had appeared before the first of January. The last instalment but one, on 4 April 1845, ends with the words "A demain l'épilogue", the epilogue tomorrow. A reader bought the story a column at a time for a hundred days, and the chapters are shaped for that. Chapter X ends with Charles IX whispering to his mother that Henri de Navarre is, after all, his brother-in-law, and Catherine whispering back: yes, but supposing he were not? Chapter XXII ends with René snatching a box of lip salve out of Madame de Sauve's hands because his boy has delivered the wrong one.
The poison plot is paced for the same reason. Catherine steals the salve in Chapter XX, the box changes hands in Chapter XXII, and the reader waits to learn who will put it to their lips. Chapter XXXIV ends with Madame de Sauve pointing at the carpet, where every step the queen mother takes leaves a print of blood. Chapter XLIX ends with the duc d'Alençon standing silent, as his brother has asked him to, while Charles IX finishes reading a chapter of the poisoned book. Chapter LXII ends with the surgeon Ambroise Paré walking in, smelling the air and asking who has been burning arsenic, and the king answering with one word. Each of those endings was the last line a subscriber read that morning.
Dumas, Auguste Maquet and the history they used
Auguste Maquet, born in Paris in 1813, was a teacher of literature when the poet Gérard de Nerval introduced him to Alexandre Dumas in 1839. The Larousse encyclopedia credits him with the documentation and the preparatory work on most of Dumas's big historical novels, and names the cycle that begins with La Reine Margot among them. The arrangement was not hidden. When the two men turned the novel into a play for the opening of Dumas's own theatre in February 1847, the printed text carried both names. The partnership ended in 1856, after Maquet went to court over money Dumas owed him. The Société des Amis d'Alexandre Dumas lists Maquet as the collaborator on this novel, and Project Gutenberg lists him as its second author.
What the research gave them was a real family and two real deaths. Marguerite de Valois was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1553, married Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572, and saw the massacre begin six days into her marriage. Annibal de Coconnat, a Piedmontese gentleman born about 1535, was captain of the guards to the duc d'Anjou. He plotted with La Mole for the duc d'Alençon in 1574 and was beheaded with him on the Place de Grève on 30 April that year. Dumas moves the facts to suit the story. His Coconnas is a young man of the Guise party who arrives in Paris on the eve of the massacre, and his execution takes place after a trial for sorcery against the king. The poisoned hunting book, the black hens and the head in the embroidered bag are the novelist's, and the book never pretends otherwise.
Coconnas and La Mole: from a stab in the dark to a shared scaffold
The two men meet in Chapter IV under the sign of an inn, a roast fowl in a black sky, and go in arm in arm because neither will go first. That evening Coconnas joins the killers and La Mole goes to find the King of Navarre. In Chapter VIII Coconnas stabs La Mole in the arm at Coligny's gate, chases him through the streets to the Louvre and wounds him again on the queen's bed. In Chapter XVI they meet by chance under the gibbet at Montfaucon. La Mole tells the Piedmontese he has taken two vows: to turn Catholic, which he has done, and to hang Coconnas from the small nail beneath the admiral. They fight until each has run the other through and both roll into the ditch. The executioner Caboche, passing with his red cart, takes them to the Louvre on the queen's order.
Dumas then lets the friendship grow in the reader's absence, and brings it back as comedy. In Chapter XLIV Coconnas tells the duchesse de Nevers that friendship is a star and love is a candle, and resigns from the duc d'Alençon's service by letter, signing himself the inseparable friend of Monsieur de la Mole. The last chapters pay the comedy back in full. In the torture chamber at Vincennes Caboche drives leather wedges into Coconnas's boot instead of oak, and Coconnas screams on cue while dictating evidence that will ruin the duke. On the scaffold he lifts his broken friend in his arms, carries him up the steps, and asks to die second so that La Mole will have someone to lean on. In the headsman's cellar their bodies lie side by side, and the hangman has laid La Mole's right hand in Coconnas's left.
Quotes from Queen Margot
To see the court without seeing Marguerite de Valois is to see neither France nor the court.
In giving my sister Margot to Henry of Navarre, I give my sister to all the Protestants of the kingdom.
Queen, I have no throne; wife, I have no husband!
Why we recommend it
The best villain Dumas ever wrote is a mother
Catherine de Médicis poisons with gloves, lip salve and a book, reads her sons' deaths in a hen's brain, and still wins the last chapter. Milady in The Three Musketeers is a sketch beside her.
A friendship story inside a court thriller
La Mole and Coconnas try to kill each other on the night of the massacre and die holding hands. Dumas gives their friendship more pages than either love affair.
Paris in 1572, street by street
The Louvre, the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, the Pont Saint-Michel, Montfaucon and the Place de Grève are all named and used. A reader can walk most of it.
The daily-serial machine at full power
Written for La Presse in a hundred daily parts, the novel ends chapter after chapter on a whispered line or a box of poison changing hands. It is a lesson in how the form worked.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Marguerite de Valois
Margot: sister of Charles IX, married on the first page to Henri de Navarre, and the woman who hides a wounded Protestant in her closet on the night of the massacre.
Henri de Navarre
The Protestant bridegroom, nineteen years old, who keeps his life by going to mass and keeps his kingdom by never quite saying what he thinks.
Catherine de Médicis
The queen mother: Florentine, a reader of horoscopes and hens' brains, and the hand behind every poison in the book.
Charles IX
The king: a hunter and a poet who lends his arquebuses to assassins, and the only member of his family who comes to love Henri de Navarre.
La Mole
Joseph de Lerac de la Mole, a Protestant gentleman from Provence who arrives in Paris on the eve of the massacre with letters for Coligny and a face that undoes the queen.
Annibal de Coconnas
A red-haired Catholic from Piedmont who joins the massacre on his first night in Paris, stabs La Mole twice, and becomes the friend who carries him up the scaffold.
Henriette de Nevers
The queen's closest friend, mistress of the Hôtel de Guise while her husband is away, who picks a hero off the pavement and keeps him.
François, duc d'Alençon
The youngest royal brother, jealous of everyone, who wants Navarre's throne and carries his mother's poisoned book to Henri's room.
Henri, duc d'Anjou
The second brother, victor of Jarnac and Montcontour, sent off to be King of Poland and back in time to become Henri III.
René
Catherine de Médicis's perfumer and astrologer, with a shop on the Pont Saint-Michel and an altar in the back room; the maker of the gloves and the keeper of the book.
Charlotte de Sauve
One of the queen mother's ladies, placed in Henri de Navarre's way and loved by him more than her mistress intended.
Admiral Coligny
The old Protestant leader whom Charles IX calls his father, shot in the Rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, killed in his house on the Rue de Béthizy, and hung by the feet at Montfaucon.
Maurevel
The King's Slayer: the hired marksman who shot at Coligny, murdered his own commander De Mouy, and leads the killers on the night of the massacre.
Henri, duc de Guise
The Catholic party's young champion, Marguerite's lover when the book opens, who waits in Coligny's courtyard for the admiral's body to be thrown down to him.
Maître Caboche
Executioner of the provostship of Paris, who carts the wounded duellists home from Montfaucon, tortures Coconnas with leather wedges, and keeps his word about the heads.
Gillonne
Marguerite's confidante, daughter of the maréchal de Matignon, who lets the rope ladder down and opens the door to the password.
Maître La Hurière
Landlord of La Belle Étoile on the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, a Catholic who sharpens his partisan on the evening of 24 August.
De Mouy de Saint-Phale
The young Huguenot captain whose father Maurevel murdered, and who organises Henri de Navarre's escape.
Actéon
The king's greyhound, who follows him everywhere and chews a page of the wrong book.
Bring it to book club
- Henri de Navarre tells Marguerite on their wedding night that he needs a faithful ally more than a faithful wife. Does the novel ever let that alliance become something else?
- Coconnas kills Protestants with enthusiasm in Chapter VII and is the book's most likeable man by Chapter XLIV. How does Dumas manage the turn, and does it work for you?
- Charles IX says he was born to be a poet, not a king. How much of what happens is his weakness and how much his mother's strength?
- The poisoned book reaches the wrong reader. What does the novel gain by making the king's death an accident of his own curiosity?
- Marguerite goes to a ball with her lover's head in a bag in the next room. Is the last chapter about her a portrait of strength, of duty, or of something the book refuses to name?
Timeline
August 18, 1572
Marguerite de Valois marries Henri de Navarre in Paris; the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day begins six days later. The novel opens on the wedding night.
December 25, 1844
La Presse announces that it is beginning the publication of La Reine Margot, a novel by Alexandre Dumas, in daily parts.
April 4, 1845
The penultimate instalment in La Presse closes with the words A demain l'épilogue; the epilogue runs the next day.
1845
Garnier frères publishes the first book edition in Paris, six volumes in octavo.
February 20, 1847
Dumas's own Théâtre-Historique in Paris opens with La Reine Margot, a drama in five acts and thirteen tableaux written with Auguste Maquet.
1900
Thomas Y. Crowell publishes the anonymous English translation in New York as Marguerite de Valois; Methuen issues it in London in two volumes as Queen Margot.
1994
Patrice Chéreau's film La Reine Margot, with Isabelle Adjani as Margot and Daniel Auteuil as Henri de Navarre, wins the Jury Prize at Cannes; Virna Lisi is named Best Actress for her Catherine de Médicis.
2008
Oxford World's Classics publishes David Coward's revised and annotated version of the 1846 English translation as La Reine Margot.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Garnier frères
- 1845
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Thomas Y. Crowell & Company
- 1900
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Methuen & Co.
- 1900
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics)
- 2008
- 9780199538447
- David Coward
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Count of Monte Cristo
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Running in a rival Paris newspaper in the same months, and built on the same appetite for poison, disguise and slow revenge.
Read our takeTwenty Years After
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Twenty Years After
The sequel Dumas published in Le Siècle in 1845, while La Reine Margot was running in La Presse.
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A Tale of Two Cities
Another novel of Paris in the grip of political killing, written by a man who admired Dumas and used the same serial form.
Read our takeQueen Margot: frequently asked questions
Is Queen Margot a true story?
The frame is history and the plot is Dumas. Marguerite de Valois really married Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572, the St Bartholomew's Day massacre really began six days later, and La Mole and Coconnas were real men beheaded together in Paris in 1574. The poisoned book, the black hens, the duel at Montfaucon and the love affairs are invented.
Who was the real Queen Margot?
Marguerite de France, called Marguerite de Valois, born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1553 and died in Paris in 1615. She was the daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis, the sister of three kings, and the first wife of Henri IV, who had the marriage annulled in 1599. She wrote poems and memoirs of her own.
Why do English editions call it Queen Margot, Marguerite de Valois and La Reine Margot?
The French title is La Reine Margot. The nineteenth-century English translation quoted above was published in New York in 1900 as Marguerite de Valois, and Methuen split the same book into two volumes under the name Queen Margot. Oxford World's Classics keeps the French title. All three are the same novel.
Which English translation should I read?
The Oxford World's Classics edition, edited and translated by David Coward, is the current unabridged text with notes and is the one listed here. The anonymous 1900 translation is free on Project Gutenberg as ebook 33609 and reads well; its spellings of names, Catharine for Catherine, are old-fashioned.
Do I need to read The Three Musketeers first?
No. Queen Margot stands alone. It is the first book of a separate three-novel sequence about the last Valois kings, followed by La Dame de Monsoreau and Les Quarante-Cinq, and the later two books are not needed to finish this one.
Is the 1994 film faithful to the book?
Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot keeps the wedding, the massacre, the affair with La Mole and the poisoned book, and won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1994, with Virna Lisi named Best Actress for her Catherine de Médicis. It compresses the friendship between La Mole and Coconnas, which in the novel has more pages than either love story.
How violent is it?
The massacre is shown at street level across three chapters, Coligny's body is hung by the feet at Montfaucon for the court to visit, and there is one chapter of torture. Dumas writes it fast and without lingering, but it is there.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Queen Margot, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1abcdeMarguerite de Valois (anonymous English translation, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, 1900)
NovelProject Gutenberg, eBook no. 33609, 1900Used forThe primary text: the anonymous English translation printed by Thomas Y. Crowell in New York in 1900, read in the Project Gutenberg transcription for the plot, the character guides, the Paris place names and every quotation.
2↑La Presse, 25 décembre 1844 — first instalment of La Reine Margot
PeriodicalGallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1844Used forThe newspaper's own announcement, found through Gallica's full-text search, that it was beginning the serial that day.
3↑Catalogue général — notices for La reine Margot (Garnier frères, 1845) and the drame en cinq actes by Dumas and Maquet (Michel Lévy, 1847)
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forThe national library's notices for the six-volume Garnier frères first edition of 1845 and for the 1847 play by Dumas and Maquet, which record its creation at the Théâtre-Historique on 20 February 1847.
6↑Auguste Maquet
WebsiteEncyclopédie LarousseUsed forMaquet's life, his introduction to Dumas by Gérard de Nerval, his part in the Reine Margot cycle and the lawsuit that ended the partnership.
7↑La Reine Margot, Oxford World's Classics, edited and translated by David Coward — edition record
WebsiteGoogle Books, 2008Used forThe Oxford World's Classics edition record: edited and translated by David Coward, described by the publisher as a revised edition of the 1846 translation.
8La Presse, 4 avril 1845 — penultimate instalment of La Reine Margot, announcing the epilogue for the next day
PeriodicalGallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1845Used forThe instalment that ends A demain l'épilogue, fixing the close of the serial on 5 April 1845.
9La reine Margot — Dictionnaire des œuvres d'Alexandre Dumas
WebsiteSociété des Amis d'Alexandre Dumas (dumaspere.com)Used forThe Dumas society's entry on the novel: 1845, Maquet as collaborator, first volume of the Valois trilogy, and the 1994 film.
10Bibliographie des œuvres d'Alexandre Dumas — éditions originales
WebsiteSociété des Amis d'Alexandre Dumas (dumaspere.com)Used forFirst-edition details for the novel (Garnier frères, 1845, six volumes) and the printed play (Michel Lévy, 1847).
11Chronologie de la vie d'Alexandre Dumas
WebsiteSociété des Amis d'Alexandre Dumas (dumaspere.com)Used forThe year 1847 in Dumas's life: the opening of the Théâtre-Historique in February and of the Château de Monte-Cristo in July.
12La Reine Margot (Queen Margot), directed by Patrice Chéreau, 1994 — film page
WebsiteFestival de Cannes, 1994Used forCredits and cast of Patrice Chéreau's film.
13Festival de Cannes 1994 — awards
WebsiteFestival de Cannes, 1994Used forThe 1994 prize list: Jury Prize for La Reine Margot, Best Actress for Virna Lisi.
14Editions of La reine Margot and Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas — search results
WebsiteOpen LibraryUsed forEdition records used for the Methuen two-volume Queen Margot and the Oxford printing date.
15Alexandre Dumas, dit Alexandre Dumas père
WebsiteEncyclopédie LarousseUsed forDumas's life and the place of the novel in it.
16Queen Margot
NovelAlexandre Dumas, 1845Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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