The Real Story of The Three (Or Maybe Four?) Musketeers
They were not just fictional characters.
In their famous 1844 novel titled The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas and his co-author Auguste Macque take their readers to 17th century France through the fascinating adventures of the trio. It is one of the great classics of French literature and was initially published in the Le Siècle newspaper in 1844 in a serialized format as part of a weekly column.
Each week, an additional part of the story was published, which was a very common way of publishing literary works in the 19th century when readers were short on the money required to purchase entire books. Dumas’ work was so popular that wherever Le Siècle was sold, there would be long queues of people looking to buy the latest issue.
The Three Musketeers follows the story of a young man from Gascony named D’Artagnan who arrives in Paris to begin his career as a musketeer (a soldier armed with a musket, a light gun with a long barrel). There, he befriends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, the three loyal musketeers of King Louis XIII.
Together, the four of them go on many adventures opposing the Prime Minister and his agents to save the honor of Anne of France — the Queen of Austria. Although a work of fiction, The Three Musketeers draws inspiration from a…
