By: Mr. Malone
Though The Three Musketeers was a fictional story, much of the history portrayed in the novel remains true to historical account.
Cardinal Richelieu’s private guards did have a rivalry with the King’s Musketeers. Cardinal Richelieu did not plot secret schemes in order to go to war with England, as the novel states, but he did use the King’s trust in
order to start a war with the Holy Roman Empire. King Louis XIII became extremely ill during 1625 and Cardinal Richelieu became the dominating force in French political decisions. The novel portrays the King as too trusting and slightly inept, but in reality, he was simply ill.
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| Cardinal Richelieu |
The novel underplays the true back story between King Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu, and Queen Anne. Queen Anne was Austrian, which meant that France had an alliance with Austria, even though they were a competing world power at the time. Cardinal Richelieu had religious differences with King Louis XIII’s mother (who was from the prominent Italian Medici family). King Louis was fairly young during the time of The Three Musketeers (only 24 years old), so his experience as a king would have been minimal, which is another reason that he relied so much on Cardinal Richelieu’s advice.
In the novel, Cardinal Richelieu disbands the Musketeers in an attempt to seize power from the King, but in reality, he sent the Musketeers and other agents to suppress political opposition in order to show the country that the King had all the power. But behind closed doors, Cardinal Richelieu wanted the French Church to have more authority.
The novel’s conflict between France and England is historically inaccurate. Actually, during 1625, France was engulfed in the Thirty Years’ War with the Holy Roman Empire, not England. Later, France and England would renew their rivalry, but not during the time period in which The Three Musketeers takes place.
Overall, The Three Musketeers remained true to the historical accounts of the era. Alexandre Dumas embellished Cardinal Richelieu’s motives for his advice to the King, which made him a villain in the novel. Dumas also used real Musketeer experiences to create fictional Musketeer characters. Though secret trades and deals did occur in French politics during the 17th century, the particular secret deals and correspondences in the novel were fabricated in order to create an exciting plot and develop romance.
