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Alexandre Dumas
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Taking the Bastile (Works of Alexandre Dumas) Paperback – May 1, 2001

by Alexandre Dumas (Author)
3.1 3.1 out of 5 stars 6 ratings
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1902. Illustrated with drawings on wood by eminent French and American artists. Dumas, French novelist and playwright, is now primarily recognized for his historical novels, which include the ever popular Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. The novel On the borders of Picardy and the province of Soissons, and on that part of the national territory which, under the name of the Isle of France, formed a portion of the ancient patrimony of our kings, and in the center of an immense crescent formed by a forest of fifty thousand acres which stretches its horns to the north and south, rises almost buried amid the shades of a vast park planted by Francis I and Henry II, the small city of Villers-Cotterets. This place is celebrated from having given birth to Charles Albert Demoustier, who, at the period when our present history commences, was there writing his Letters to Emilie, on Mythology, to the unbounded satisfaction of the pretty women of those days, who eagerly snatched his publications from one another as soon as printed. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
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  1. Print length
    632 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Fredonia Books (NL)
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2001
  5. Dimensions
    4.9 x 1.7 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1589632389
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1589632387
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fredonia Books (NL) (May 1, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 632 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1589632389
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1589632387
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.9 x 1.7 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.1 3.1 out of 5 stars 6 ratings

About the author

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Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas

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Alexandre Dumas, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie; (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas, père, was a French writer. His works have been translated into nearly 100 languages, and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. His novels have been adapted since the early twentieth century for nearly 200 films. Dumas' last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, unfinished at his death, was completed by a scholar and published in 2005, becoming a bestseller. It was published in English in 2008 as The Last Cavalier

Customer reviews

3.1 out of 5 stars
3.1 out of 5
6 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

SoCal Kat
1.0 out of 5 stars didnt get through the first page
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2016
Verified Purchase
too many typos to enjoy reading. please fix this problem as i would very much like to read it. thank you
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Michael Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Like anything he wrote
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2015
Verified Purchase
Like anything he wrote, Dumas has a way of making you laugh and endearing you to principal characters in his story. This is no exception. Also the intricate web of complexity that you have come to expect has not suffered in this work. I would advise reading these books in order, as references to previous books do happen. The one before this is the Queen's Necklace, and the one after is The Countess of Charny.
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Misfit
5.0 out of 5 stars "I have no longer a horror of others - I fear I may resemble them"
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2008
And -- "There are moments when the destiny of a whole nation is being weighed in the scales of Fate. One of them weighs down the other. Everyone already thinks he has attained the proposed end. Suddenly some invisible hand lets fall into the other scale the blade of a poniard or a pistol-ball. Then all changes, and one only cry is heard, Woe to the vanquished!"

Wow. It was paragraphs like that that just knocked my socks off. I always knew Dumas was brilliant, but he really outdoes himself in this book. Taking the Bastile is the fourth in Dumas' six book series retelling the French Revolution and begins several years after the close of  The Queen's Necklace (1902) . The first third of the book retells the events leading up to and including the storming of the Bastile through the POV of Ange Pitou a young orphan from the countryside and his comrade in arms the farmer Billot. Agents of the French government remove papers from Billot's farm that he is storing for Dr. Gilbert, which sends he and Pitou to Paris to advise the doctor of the theft. They find Gilbert (yes, our young Gilbert from the first two books) imprisoned in the Bastile and are swept up with the rest of the city on that fateful day when all Paris attacks and destroys that symbol of tyranny.

Gilbert is rescued and discovers that the person who ordered his imprisonment is the Countess de Charny, a name he does not recognize and goes to Versailles in search of answers. Presented to Louis XVI as a doctor of renown (being a pupil of Balsamo in the mystic arts), Gilbert discovers that the countess is the beauteous Andrée whom he loved as a young boy. Andrée denies any knowledge of Gilbert or his imprisonment until Gilbert uses his magnetic powers and hypnotizes her (very creepy) to gain the truth -- there was an incident in the second book where Andrée had been compromised by Balsamo and Gilbert and she feared exposure and scandal.

As Andrée recovers from Gilbert's ministrations we see that she is in love with her husband the Count de Charny, who loves the Queen (who returns his love), to Andrée's great sorrow. The story then switches back and forth between the actions at the court of Louis XVI and the growing violence and restlessness of the Paris mobs as Dumas recounts the events leading up to the Women's March on Versailles demanding bread and the subsequent mob storming the palace sending the royal family on a mad dash for safety (unputdownable!). The final 100 or so pages of the book detail Ange Pitou's return to his country village and the logistics of how the villagers were converted from the mindset of being simple farmers working for a living to the rationale of the revolutionary and setting up a local national guard.

That's about as much of the plot as I'm going to try and detail, the bulk of the book is known history as Dumas recounts the terror of the revolution from all walks of life in late 18C France, the countryman, the farmer, the Church, the Paris citizens and the royal court of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. Some readers may find a slow spot here and there at the beginning and end of the book, but other than that I found it quite unputdownable. Next up in the series,  The Countess de Charny .

Side note, there are several newly published versions of these books and some are poorly translated -- one of those being The Queen's Necklace (published by Wildside) which I had purchased prior to realizing this was a series, and I found the quality of the story sorely lacked from that bad translation. Dumas with a mediocre story and boring dialogue? Not on your life. The other three I obtained very old copies published by PF Collier and Sons in the early 1900's and I strongly urge you to seek those out either via library or used (around $7), and I'll be sticking with that for the last two books in the series.
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