In the spring of 1860, the 58-year-old Alexandre Dumas purchased and fitted
out a large sailing yacht, the "Emma," for a projected voyage to the
classical sites of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land. He took
with him captain, cook, crew, several young companions, and his youthful
mistress, Emilie Cordier, who affected a midshipman's uniform for the trip.
Naturally, Dumas contracted with the Paris Journal "Le Constitutionnel"
for a series of articles.
Dumas sailed from Marseilles to Genoa, where he had some business: to edit
the "Memoires" of his friend General Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of the
Italian "risorgimento." The Italian Peninsula was, at this time, divided
into numerous statelets and partially occupied by foreign powers. King
Victor Emmanuel, starting from a nucleus of Sardinia and Piedmont, was
gradually assembling an Italian state from the pieces, in a series of wars
and negotiations. Garibaldi provided some of the military muscle and much
of the moral inspiration.
Dumas found that Garibaldi was not in Genoa. While Dumas was at sea, an
insurrection had broken out in Palermo, at that time part of the Bourbon
Kingdom of Naples, which held the southern end of the Italian "boot."
Garibaldi had submitted his resignation to King Victor Emmanuel, (to
preserve "plausible deniability") raised and armed a thousand volunteers,
commandeered two steamers at gunpoint, and headed south with his "thousand"
for Sicily.
Naturally, Dumas instantly changed his plans, and sailed for Palermo.
However, Dumas' publisher, who had contracted for a travelogue rather than
an anti-monarchist insurrection, dropped Dumas. Dumas promptly contracted
with another journal, "La Presse" for a series of reports on the
revolution.
Dumas, however, did a great deal more than just file reports. He arranged
for the purchase (in France) of munitions, and their shipment to the
insurgents. He anchored his yacht in Naples harbor, a "half pistol shot"
from the King's Palace, and set up shop as a full-service covert operator,
encompassing black propaganda, suborning cabinet ministers and police,
bribing mercenaries to desert with their weapons, providing tactical
intelligence of troop movements and arms to local guerillas, and strategic
intelligence on King Francis II intentions to Garibaldi.
Dumas published the war letters from "La Presse" in book form as "Les
Garibaldiens: Revolution de Sicile et de Naples" in 1861. Subsequently,
he combined the travel letters from the beginning of his trip with the war
letters from end, and added some additional "now it can be told" material
to form a combined manuscript covering the entire trip. This combined
manuscript was not published. Much later, the manuscript was identified by
Dumas scholar Robert Garnett, translated into English, and published (in
1929) as "On Board the Emma."
