The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires ) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized in March–July 1844. Set in the 17th century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, inseparable friends who live by the motto "all for one, one for all" ("tous pour un, un pour tous"). ^[1]

The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later . Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances .

The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the newspaper Le Siècle between March and July 1844.

When Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers he also was a practising fencer and like many other French gentlemen of his generation he attended the schools for Canne de combat and Savate of Michel Casseux, Charles Lecour ^[2] and Joseph Charlemont (who had been a regular fencing instructor in the French army).