Celebrated Crimes

Alexandre Dumas

Description

Learn more about some of the most infamous criminals ever to walk the earth in this massive compilation from one of the foremost writers of historical fiction, Alexandre Dumas. In often-chilling detail, Dumas recounts murders, heists, and all manner of malfeasance from centuries of European history.

Sujets

• True crime

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775455318
• Langue: English

Extrait

CELEBRATED CRIMES
COMPLETE
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ALEXANDRE DUMAS
 
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Celebrated Crimes Complete First published in 1841 ISBN 978-1-77545-531-8 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Introduction The Borgias The Cenci Massacres of the South Mary Stuart Karl-Ludwig Sand Urbain Grandier Nisida Derues La Constantin Joan of Naples The Man in the Iron Mask (an Essay) Martin Guerre Ali Pacha The Countess de Saint-Geran Murat The Marquise de Brinvilliers Vaninka The Marquise de Ganges Endnotes
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Dumas's 'Celebrated Crimes' was not written for children. The novelisthas spared no language—has minced no words—to describe the violentscenes of a violent time.
In some instances facts appear distorted out of their true perspective,and in others the author makes unwarranted charges. It is not within ourprovince to edit the historical side of Dumas, any more than it would beto correct the obvious errors in Dickens's Child's History of England.The careful, mature reader, for whom the books are intended, willrecognize, and allow for, this fact.
Introduction
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The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as themotives which led to their inception, are unique. They are a series ofstories based upon historical records, from the pen of Alexandre Dumas,pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author of D'Artagnan orMonte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and a lion in the literaryset and world of fashion.
Dumas, in fact, wrote his 'Crimes Celebres' just prior to launching uponhis wonderful series of historical novels, and they may therefore beconsidered as source books, whence he was to draw so much of thatfar-reaching and intimate knowledge of inner history which hasperennially astonished his readers. The Crimes were published in Paris,in 1839-40, in eight volumes, comprising eighteen titles—all of whichnow appear in the present carefully translated text. The success of theoriginal work was instantaneous. Dumas laughingly said that he thoughthe had exhausted the subject of famous crimes, until the work was off thepress, when he immediately became deluged with letters from everyprovince in France, supplying him with material upon other deeds ofviolence! The subjects which he has chosen, however, are of bothhistoric and dramatic importance, and they have the added value of givingthe modern reader a clear picture of the state of semi-lawlessness whichexisted in Europe, during the middle ages. "The Borgias, the Cenci,Urbain Grandier, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, the Marchioness ofGanges, and the rest—what subjects for the pen of Dumas!" exclaimsGarnett.
Space does not permit us to consider in detail the material herecollected, although each title will be found to present points of specialinterest. The first volume comprises the annals of the Borgias and theCenci. The name of the noted and notorious Florentine family has becomea synonym for intrigue and violence, and yet the Borgias have not beenwithout stanch defenders in history.
Another famous Italian story is that of the Cenci. The beautifulBeatrice Cenci—celebrated in the painting of Guido, the sixteenthcentury romance of Guerrazi, and the poetic tragedy of Shelley, not tomention numerous succeeding works inspired by her hapless fate—willalways remain a shadowy figure and one of infinite pathos.
The second volume chronicles the sanguinary deeds in the south of France,carried on in the name of religion, but drenching in blood the faircountry round about Avignon, for a long period of years.
The third volume is devoted to the story of Mary Queen of Scots, anotherwoman who suffered a violent death, and around whose name an endlesscontroversy has waged. Dumas goes carefully into the dubious episodes ofher stormy career, but does not allow these to blind his sympathy for herfate. Mary, it should be remembered, was closely allied to France byeducation and marriage, and the French never forgave Elizabeth the partshe played in the tragedy.
The fourth volume comprises three widely dissimilar tales. One of thestrangest stories is that of Urbain Grandier, the innocent victim of acunning and relentless religious plot. His story was dramatised byDumas, in 1850. A famous German crime is that of Karl-Ludwig Sand, whosemurder of Kotzebue, Councillor of the Russian Legation, caused aninternational upheaval which was not to subside for many years.
An especially interesting volume is number six, containing, among othermaterial, the famous "Man in the Iron Mask." This unsolved puzzle ofhistory was later incorporated by Dumas in one of the D'Artagnan Romancesa section of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, to which it gave its name. Butin this later form, the true story of this singular man doomed to wear aniron vizor over his features during his entire lifetime could only betreated episodically. While as a special subject in the Crimes, Dumasindulges his curiosity, and that of his reader, to the full. Hugo'sunfinished tragedy,'Les Jumeaux', is on the same subject; as also areothers by Fournier, in French, and Zschokke, in German.
Other stories can be given only passing mention. The beautiful poisoner,Marquise de Brinvilliers, must have suggested to Dumas his later portraitof Miladi, in the Three Musketeers, the mast celebrated of his womancharacters. The incredible cruelties of Ali Pacha, the Turkish despot,should not be charged entirely to Dumas, as he is said to have beenlargely aided in this by one of his "ghosts," Mallefille.
"Not a mere artist"—writes M. de Villemessant, founder of theFigaro,—"he has nevertheless been able to seize on those dramaticeffects which have so much distinguished his theatrical career, and togive those sharp and distinct reproductions of character which alone canpresent to the reader the mind and spirit of an age. Not a merehistorian, he has nevertheless carefully consulted the original sourcesof information, has weighed testimonies, elicited theories, and . . .has interpolated the poetry of history with its most thorough prose."
The Borgias
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Prologue
On the 8th of April, 1492, in a bedroom of the Carneggi Palace, aboutthree miles from Florence, were three men grouped about a bed whereon afourth lay dying.
The first of these three men, sitting at the foot of the bed, and halfhidden, that he might conceal his tears, in the gold-brocaded curtains,was Ermolao Barbaro, author of the treatise 'On Celibacy', and of'Studies in Pliny': the year before, when he was at Rome in the capacityof ambassador of the Florentine Republic, he had been appointed Patriarchof Aquileia by Innocent VIII.
The second, who was kneeling and holding one hand of the dying manbetween his own, was Angelo Poliziano, the Catullus of the fifteenthcentury, a classic of the lighter sort, who in his Latin verses mighthave been mistaken for a poet of the Augustan age.
The third, who was standing up and leaning against one of the twistedcolumns of the bed-head, following with profound sadness the progress ofthe malady which he read in the face of his departing friend, was thefamous Pico della Mirandola, who at the age of twenty could speaktwenty-two languages, and who had offered to reply in each of theselanguages to any seven hundred questions that might be put to him by thetwenty most learned men in the whole world, if they could be assembled atFlorence.
The man on the bed was Lorenzo the Magnificent, who at the beginning ofthe year had been attacked by a severe and deep-seated fever, to whichwas added the gout, a hereditary ailment in his family. He had found atlast that the draughts containing dissolved pearls which the quackdoctor, Leoni di Spoleto, prescribed for him (as if he desired to adapthis remedies rather to the riches of his patient than to his necessities)were useless and unavailing, and so he had come to understand that hemust part from those gentle-tongued women of his, those sweet-voicedpoets, his palaces and their rich hangings; therefore he had summoned togive him absolution for his sins—in a man of less high place they mightperhaps have been called crimes—the Dominican, Giralamo FrancescoSavonarola.
It was not, however, without an inward fear, against which the praises ofhis friends availed nothing, that the pleasure-seeker and usurper awaitedthat severe and gloomy preacher by whose word's all Florence was stirred,and on whose pardon henceforth depended all his hope far another world.
Indeed, Savonarola was one of those men of stone, coming, like the statueof the Commandante, to knock at the door of a Don Giovanni, and in themidst of feast and orgy to announce that it is even now the moment tobegin to think of Heaven. He had been barn at Ferrara, whither hisfamily, one of the most illustrious of Padua, had been called by Niccolo,Marchese d'Este, and at the age of twenty-three, summoned by anirresistible vocation, had fled from his father's house, and had takenthe vows in the cloister of Dominican monks at Florence. There, where hewas appointed by his superiors to give lessons in philosophy, the youngnovice had from the first to battle against the defects of a voice thatwas both harsh and weak, a defective pronunciation, and above all, thedepression of his physical powers, exhausted as they were by too severeabstinence.
Savonarala from that time condemned himself to the most absoluteseclusion, and disappeared in the depths of his convent, as if the slabof his tomb had already fallen over him.