The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers is a French historical adventure novel written in 1844 by French author Alexandre Dumas. It is in the swashbuckler genre which has heroic chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice. Set between 1625 and 1628 it recounts the adventures of a young man named dArtagnan (a character based on Charles de Batz-Castelmore dArtagnan) after he leaves home to travel to Paris hoping to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although dArtagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately he is befriended by three of the most formidable musketeers of the age – Athos Porthos and Aramis the three musketeers or “the three inseparables” – and becomes involved in affairs of state and at court. The Three Musketeers is primarily a historical and adventure novel. However Dumas frequently portrays various injustices abuses and absurdities of the Ancient Régime giving the novel an additional political significance at the time of its publication a time when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce.