Mordaunt
Milady de Winter's son, raised in disgrace, now Cromwell's agent and the four friends' pursuer.
The names of the men who killed his mother, and then their deaths, one by one.
The book
Twenty Years After
Alexandre Dumas
At a glance
- John Francis de Winter, known as Mordaunt, agent of Oliver Cromwell
- Milady de Winter, executed at Béthune twenty years before
- Lord de Winter, who disowns him
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeJohn Francis de Winter, called Mordaunt, is the son of the woman the four musketeers had beheaded at Béthune in the first novel. He has grown up disowned by his uncle Lord de Winter and knowing only that his mother was killed. By 1648 he is Oliver Cromwell's confidential agent, sent to Paris to make sure Mazarin will not help Charles I, and he is hunting the men who took his mother from him.
Dumas gives him a real grievance and a real intelligence. He kills the executioner of Béthune in a monk's habit, kills his uncle, takes the axe at Whitehall, and packs a ship with gunpowder. He is the only villain in the trilogy who nearly wins, and Athos is the only one of the four who pities him.
How Mordaunt Is Portrayed
- The monk at the innIn Chapters XXXI and XXXII a young monk is brought to hear the dying confession of the executioner of Béthune. He learns from him the names of his mother's killers and stabs him where he lies.
- Cromwell's envoyIn Chapter XXXVII he carries Oliver Cromwell's letter to Mazarin at the Palais Royal, and is shown out through a side door so that nobody will see him leave.
- Not my uncleIn Chapter XL he confronts Lord de Winter in Paris and is told that Winter is not his uncle and does not know him. Winter, left alone, thanks God that the young man knows only him.
- To our next meeting, in EnglandIn Chapter XLIII he stands bare-headed with folded arms on a rock above the boat carrying Athos, Aramis and Winter out of France and calls across the water that they will meet in England.
- The masked executionerIn Chapter LXVII the friends learn that the real executioner has been locked in a cellar all along, and that the man in the mask who took the king's head was Mordaunt.
- The LightningIn Chapters LXX to LXXII he hires the felucca Lightning under Captain Groslow, fills its port-wine casks with gunpowder, and plans to blow the four friends up at sea with himself safely in the boat.
Mordaunt quotes
I have a son. I wished to live
He kills Lord de Winter in Chapter LVIII, in the rout that follows the king's capture. After the explosion of the Lightning in Chapter LXXIII he swims to the friends' boat and begs for his life. Athos pulls him in, and Mordaunt drags Athos under the water. Athos surfaces; Mordaunt's body rises with Athos's dagger in its chest and floats away. Athos says that he did not kill him, that it was destiny, and that he wished to live because he has a son.
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