Twenty Years After

Summary

Twenty Years After takes up d'Artagnan in 1648, when he is about forty, still a lieutenant of musketeers, living in a Paris inn and serving Cardinal Mazarin, the Italian minister who governs for the boy Louis XIV and his mother, Anne of Austria. Paris is restless under new taxes, and the parliament's resistance is about to become the civil war called the Fronde. Mazarin, who needs men he can trust, asks d'Artagnan to find the companions who once served the queen so well. The search is a study in what two decades do to men. Porthos has married money and owns three estates but is miserable because he is not a baron. Aramis, now the Abbé d'Herblay, writes verses, intrigues with duchesses and keeps a ladder at his window. Athos, the Comte de la Fère, has given up drink and lives at Bragelonne, near Blois, devoting himself to the education of his ward Raoul. D'Artagnan and Porthos take Mazarin's side; Athos and Aramis secretly serve the Frondeurs and help the Duc de Beaufort escape from Vincennes. The friends cross swords on a dark road, then meet at the Place Royale and swear that their swords will never be raised against one another again. The past arrives in the person of Mordaunt, son of Milady de Winter, whom the four friends condemned and had beheaded in the earlier novel. Disguised as a monk, he hears the deathbed confession of the executioner of Bethune and stabs him; in England he kills his uncle, Lord de Winter, and serves Cromwell. Sent across the Channel on opposite errands, the four reunite in England and try to save Charles I. Their plan to remove the London executioner fails when a masked volunteer takes his place, and Athos, hidden beneath the scaffold, receives the king's last word, Remember, and the king's blood. Mordaunt attempts to blow up their ship; in the open sea Athos tries to pull him from the water, and Mordaunt drags him under, dying on Athos's dagger. Back in France the friends find themselves betrayed by Mazarin: Athos and Aramis are imprisoned at Rueil, d'Artagnan and Porthos break out, capture the cardinal himself, and with Mazarin as hostage extract a treaty from the queen. Porthos becomes a baron and d'Artagnan a captain, Athos returns to Bragelonne, and Raoul goes to war with d'Artagnan. The book is darker than its predecessor, weighing loyalty to friends against loyalty to party and throne, and asking what the old execution of Milady still demands of the men who carried it out.

Plot or Argument

• Mazarin's Paris and a lieutenant at forty (Ch. I-VII)

  Richelieu's successor counts his gold and fears the parliament. D'Artagnan, comfortable but unpromoted at the sign of the Roe, is summoned by Mazarin and Anne of Austria and sent to recover the three friends whose names the queen has not forgotten.

• Finding Aramis and Porthos (Ch. VIII-XIII)

  At Noisy d'Artagnan finds Aramis an abbé with a secret life; at Pierrefonds, Porthos, rich and bored, accepts service in exchange for the hope of a barony. Planchet, now a confectioner and a hunted Frondeur, rejoins his old master.

• Athos and Raoul at Bragelonne (Ch. XIV-XV, XX-XXII)

  Athos has become a sober, gracious father to Raoul. At the tomb of Louis XIII in Saint Denis he instructs the boy to tell the king, a mortal man, from royalty, which he calls the gift of God.

• Beaufort's escape and the night on the road (Ch. XVI-XXVIII)

  Grimaud enters service at Vincennes and helps the Duc de Beaufort escape. D'Artagnan and Porthos, pursuing for Mazarin, meet Athos and Aramis on the other side, and the quarrel ends at the Place Royale in a renewed oath of friendship.

• Raoul's first campaign and Mordaunt's first blow (Ch. XXIX-XXXIV)

  Riding to join Condé's army before Lens, Raoul and the Comte de Guiche carry a wounded man to an inn; a monk who hears his confession turns out to be Mordaunt, who kills the former headsman of Bethune. Grimaud brings the news to Athos.

• Two exiled queens and the Paris barricades (Ch. XXXV-LIV)

  Henrietta Maria pleads for help from her impoverished rooms at the Louvre while Mazarin courts Cromwell's envoy. The arrest of Broussel brings out the barricades; the court flees Paris by night, guided by d'Artagnan, and Porthos kills a beggar in the riot.

• England and the death of Charles I (Ch. LV-LXVI)

  The four friends meet in Cromwell's camp after the Scots betray Charles. Mordaunt kills de Winter; the friends rescue themselves but not the king, despite Aramis's disguise as Bishop Juxon and the kidnapping of the executioner. Charles dies on the scaffold at Whitehall.

• The masked man and the sea (Ch. LXVII-LXXIV)

  Following the masked headsman to Cromwell's house, the friends find Mordaunt. He escapes a duel by a hidden door, then lays gunpowder in their ship; when it explodes, he swims to their boat and drags Athos into the sea. Only Athos returns.

• Charenton, Rueil and the price of peace (Ch. LXXV-XC)

  Mazarin arrests the friends on landing. Aramis kills the Duc de Châtillon at Charenton; d'Artagnan and Porthos escape Rueil, kidnap Mazarin and dictate terms to Anne of Austria. Porthos is made a baron, d'Artagnan a captain, and the court returns to Paris.

Characters

• D'Artagnan, protagonist

  Gascon lieutenant of musketeers, now about forty, shrewder and poorer in illusions than at twenty, who serves Mazarin while despising him and whose wits drive every rescue.

• Athos (Comte de la Fère), friend, moral centre

  Sober now and devoted to Raoul; a Frondeur on principle, loyal to royalty, troubled by the old judgment on Milady, and the one who reaches out to save Mordaunt.

• Porthos (du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds), friend

  Wealthy widower and strongest of the four, whose whole political programme is a baron's title; comic, vain and unfailingly brave.

• Aramis (Abbé d'Herblay), friend

  Priest, poet, gallant and conspirator for the Fronde; the coldest fighter of the four, ruthless at Charenton.

• Mordaunt, antagonist

  Son of Milady and the elder Lord de Winter's brother, disinherited and embittered; Cromwell's agent, who stalks his mother's judges.

• Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister

  Italian successor to Richelieu: cautious, avaricious, unpopular, quick to promise and slow to pay.

• Anne of Austria, queen regent

  Mother of Louis XIV, proud and imperious, who remembers the musketeers' old service but signs their terms only under compulsion.

• Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne, Athos's ward

  Fifteen-year-old whose education in honour and first taste of war run through the book; Athos's son, a fact hidden from him.

• Charles I, King of England

  Dignified, sorrowful and courteous to the end; betrayed by the Scots and tried and executed at Whitehall.

• Henrietta Maria, Queen of England in exile

  French-born wife of Charles I, living in poverty in the Louvre and begging help for her husband.

• Lord de Winter, English royalist

  Milady's brother-in-law and the friends' old ally, killed by his nephew Mordaunt in battle.

• The Duc de Beaufort, Frondeur prince

  Popular grandson of Henri IV, imprisoned at Vincennes, whose escape with Grimaud's help opens the Fronde's adventures.

• Grimaud, Athos's servant

  Laconic servant who infiltrates Vincennes, witnesses the headsman's confession and discovers Mordaunt's gunpowder.

• Planchet and Mousqueton, servants

  D'Artagnan's former lackey, now a Frondeur confectioner, and Porthos's stout steward, who supply much of the comedy.

Lessons

• An oath at the Place Royale

  Divided between Mazarin and the Fronde, the four could easily kill one another on the Vendomois road. Instead they meet by night, explain their conduct, and swear that their swords will not cross again. Dumas makes friendship a promise renewed by speech, candour and forgiveness, not a feeling that survives on its own.

  • D'Artagnan says the friendship was broken not by the clash of swords but by dissimulation at Bragelonne. Is he right?
  • What does each friend give up in order to keep the oath?
  • Later Athos says they were never beaten when they were four together. What does the plot do to test that claim?

• The executed woman's son

  Mordaunt is a murderer and a regicide's tool, yet his grievance is real: the friends judged and killed his mother without lawful authority. Athos alone admits this and calls it a possible bond of crime. The book lets students weigh justice done privately against the vengeance it provokes.

  • Was the night tribunal against Milady in The Three Musketeers just? What does Athos now think?
  • How does Mordaunt's disguise as a confessor make his first murder especially terrible?
  • Athos reaches out his hand to save Mordaunt. Is that heroism, folly, or penance?

• The king and the crown

  At Saint Denis Athos teaches Raoul to distinguish the king, a mortal man, from royalty, which he calls the gift of God. That distinction lets Athos fight Mazarin in the Fronde while risking his life for Charles I, and it is a seventeenth-century noble's creed presented sympathetically by a nineteenth-century novelist, not a modern political theory.

  • How does Athos's lesson explain both his rebellion in France and his loyalty in England?
  • D'Artagnan serves Mazarin for pay and promotion. Is his loyalty less honourable than Athos's?
  • Does the novel's portrait of Charles I make the case for royalty, or only for the man?

• History bent by romance

  Dumas and Maquet keep real dates and names: Broussel's arrest, the flight of the court, the trial at Westminster Hall, the execution at Whitehall and Charles's word Remember to Bishop Juxon. They invent the musketeers' plots around them. Reading the book well means telling the documented frame from the invented action.

  • Which events in the English chapters can you confirm from a history of 1649, and which are invented?
  • Why place Athos under the scaffold rather than simply in the crowd?
  • Does the novel end the Fronde too neatly? What happened after the Peace of Rueil?

Context

The action covers roughly 1648-49. In France the Fronde began as resistance by the Parlement of Paris to Mazarin's fiscal edicts during the minority of Louis XIV; the arrest of the councillor Pierre Broussel in August 1648 produced the Day of the Barricades, and in January 1649 the court fled Paris for Saint-Germain. The Peace of Rueil (March 1649) ended this first, parliamentary phase, though the Fronde of the princes continued until 1653. In England the defeat of Charles I, his surrender to and handing over by the Scots, his trial in Westminster Hall and execution outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall on 30 January 1649 supply the English chapters. Beaufort's escape from Vincennes, the victory at Lens and the fighting at Charenton are real events; the musketeers' roles in them are invented.

Composition

Written by Dumas with Auguste Maquet, who drafted much of the historical scaffolding, and serialized in the Paris daily Le Siècle in 1845, the year after The Three Musketeers ran in the same paper; book publication followed. Like its predecessor it drew heavily on memoirs of the period, including those of the Cardinal de Retz (the coadjutor Gondi, who appears in the novel). The series continued in Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847-50).

Reception

The sequel was a popular success, though readers and critics have generally ranked it below The Three Musketeers in fame while often praising its greater maturity and its English episodes. English translations appeared from the 1840s onward; the Project Gutenberg text used here is an anonymous nineteenth-century version. Stage and screen versions are fewer than for the first novel, and the book is usually encountered as the bridge to the Bragelonne cycle.

Comparisons

• The Three Musketeers

  Twenty years on, Milady's execution at Armentières is no longer an ending but a debt: her son turns the earlier book's night tribunal into the engine of this one, and Athos reopens the question of whether the four had any right to judge her.

• The Vicomte de Bragelonne

  Raoul, a boy receiving his sword at Saint Denis here, becomes the hero and sorrow of the next cycle, where the young Louis XIV whom the Fronde humiliated rules without a minister, as Athos predicted.

• The Count of Monte Cristo

  Mordaunt and Edmond Dantès both spend years on vengeance for a parent or a lost life, but Dantès finally doubts his mission, while Mordaunt dies still clutching his victim, a darker treatment of the same appetite.

• A Tale of Two Cities

  Dickens sets personal loyalty against a revolutionary tribunal and ends on a scaffold; Dumas's French and English revolts end on a scaffold too, and both novels ask what a private man can do when a crowd demands a king's or a nobleman's head.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The portrait of d'Artagnan at forty in Chapter VI: what twenty years of garrison life have taken from him, and what the narrator says he would have become had he kept his friends.
• Athos at the tomb of Louis XIII in Saint Denis (Chapter XXII), giving Raoul his sword and the distinction between the king and royalty.
• The night meeting at the Place Royale (Chapter XXVIII), where Athos names the killing of Milady as a possible bond of crime among the four.
• The false monk at the inn near Lens and the headsman's confession (Chapters XXXI-XXXIII); notice what Mordaunt learns before he strikes.
• Athos's hand stretched out to Mordaunt in the sea (Chapter LXXIII), and the word Athos uses afterward for what killed him.

Key terms and names

The Fronde

Named after the sling (fronde) used by Paris street boys, the revolts of 1648-53 against Mazarin's government, first by the Parlement of Paris and later by great nobles.

Coadjutor

A bishop appointed to assist and succeed another; here Paul de Gondi, coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris and later the Cardinal de Retz, a leader of the Paris Fronde.

Parlement

The high court of Paris, a body of magistrates who registered royal edicts and in 1648 refused new taxes; not an elected parliament like England's.

Headsman of Bethune

The executioner, brother of a priest Milady had seduced, who beheaded her by the river in The Three Musketeers.

Rueil

Mazarin's country residence west of Paris, where Athos and Aramis are held and where the novel's peace is signed.

Regicide

The killing of a king, or one who takes part in it; used of the judges and executioner of Charles I.

Baron

The lowest rank of titled nobility in France, the object of Porthos's whole ambition in the novel.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does Mazarin want d'Artagnan's old companions, and what does each of the three want before he will serve?
2. Comprehension How does Mordaunt learn the names of the men who condemned his mother, and what does he do with the knowledge?
3. Comprehension What was the plan to delay the execution of Charles I, and how does Mordaunt defeat it?
4. Interpretation Athos fights for the Fronde in France but risks his life for the King of England. Using his words at Saint Denis, explain why he sees no contradiction.
5. Interpretation Athos says it was not he but destiny that killed Mordaunt, and d'Artagnan calls it the will of God. What does each explanation leave out?
6. Interpretation Compare Athos and Aramis at Charenton. What does Dumas want us to feel about each man's way of fighting?
7. Big Question When an old wrong was done for a good reason, what does justice ask of those who did it, years later?

Faith Connections

• Romans 12:19 (Scripture)

  Mordaunt makes himself the avenger of his mother; Athos, who once judged her privately, now tries to save her son. The verse forbids exactly the private judgment both of them have exercised.

• 1 Peter 2:17 (Scripture)

  Fear God, honour the king: Athos's lesson at Saint Denis places God first and royalty second, and distinguishes the reverence owed to an office from the man who holds it.

• Matthew 5:44 (Scripture)

  In the sea Athos holds out his hand to the man sworn to kill him and his friends, the novel's nearest image of love for an enemy, and it nearly costs his life.

• Aeschylus, Oresteia (Great Conversation)

  Like Orestes, Mordaunt inherits a blood-debt from a parent; unlike the Oresteia, the novel offers no court that can end the cycle, only Athos's pity and an accident of the sea.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Political causes change and princes reward badly, but a friendship founded on honour can bind men who serve opposite parties, provided they speak candidly and refuse to strike one another; yet the same friendship cannot erase the guilt of a private judgment the four once shared.

Rhetorical device: foreshadowing through recurrence. The word Remember in Charles I's mouth recalls the friends' duty to the past, and Mordaunt is the past that remembers them; the novel repeatedly brings the debt of Armentières back before it is paid at sea.

Debate: Resolved: that Athos was right to stretch out his hand to Mordaunt.

Memory Work

But to you, D’Artagnan, I am, I hope, still dear Athos, your comrade, your friend

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace Mordaunt's three great acts of revenge (the false confession, the death of de Winter, and the attack at sea). How does Dumas make his grievance intelligible while still judging his deeds?

Comparison with The Three Musketeers: Compare the night judgment of Milady in The Three Musketeers with the way the four friends remember it here. Has the act changed, or have the men?

Medical Lens

This is an adventure novel, not a medical one, but it handles wounds and dying with unusual concreteness for a romance. The headsman of Bethune, shot through the thigh and abdomen by marauders, judges his own wound mortal before any surgeon arrives, and a surgeon later withdraws Mordaunt's dagger from him. Battle deaths at Charenton, the beheading of Charles I described from beneath the scaffold, and the near-drowning and revival of Athos are given in physical detail. Mousqueton's ordeal adrift after the explosion is played for comedy, but it turns on the old sea custom of drawing lots for food when starvation threatens. Grimaud is said to have become something of a surgeon through years of making lint and bandages, a glimpse of how soldiers' servants supplied rough field care.

• Chapter XV (Athos as a Diplomatist)

  Raoul reports that young Louise de la Vallière has fallen and that the physician fears she will be lame for life.

  Physicians Doctors
• Chapters XXXI-XXXIII (The Monk; The Absolution; Grimaud Speaks)

  The wounded headsman of Bethune describes his own mortal gunshot wound; after Mordaunt stabs him, a surgeon draws out the blade and he dies.

  WAR Wounds Surgery Death Dying
• Chapter LX (Respect to Fallen Majesty)

  Grimaud dresses a wound, the narrator noting that years of making lint and bandages have made him something of a surgeon.

  WAR Wounds
• Chapter LXVI (Remember!)

  The execution of Charles I as experienced by Athos hidden beneath the scaffold.

  Death Dying
• Chapter LXXIV (How Mousqueton had a Narrow Escape of being eaten)

  Cold and hungry in an open boat after the explosion, the survivors joke grimly about who should be eaten first.

  Starvation Nutrition
• Chapter LXXVIII (The Battle of Charenton)

  Chanleu falls mortally wounded and the Duc de Châtillon is shot through a notch in his cuirass.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation at Bragelonne on the night after the Place Royale, in which Athos tells Raoul nothing of Milady but tries to explain why an old judgment can still weigh on a man.

• Fiction

  Retell the scene beneath the Whitehall scaffold from Grimaud's or Aramis's point of view, keeping to what each could actually see and hear.

• Essay

  Compare Athos's lesson at Saint Denis with the conduct of each of the four friends. Which of them best keeps the distinction between the king and royalty, and which ignores it altogether?

• Classroom

  Build a two-column timeline of 1648-49: real events of the Fronde and the English Civil War on one side, the musketeers' invented exploits on the other, with chapter numbers for each.

• Poetry

  Write a short elegy for Charles I in the voice of a French gentleman who served him and failed to save him, built around the single word Remember.

Further Reading

• The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas

  The first volume, ending with Milady's execution.

• The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Alexandre Dumas

  The continuation, centred on Raoul and the young Louis XIV.

• Memoirs, Cardinal de Retz

  The coadjutor Gondi's own account of the Fronde, a source for Dumas and Maquet.

• Mazarin: The Crisis of Absolutism in France, Geoffrey Treasure

  Modern life of the cardinal Dumas caricatures, with a full account of the Fronde.

• The Trial of Charles I, C. V. Wedgwood

  Narrative history of the trial and execution that Dumas dramatizes in the English chapters.