Help, I've fallen into history fandom and can't get out

 Mostly due to the fact that I'm in the middle of reading The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss which is a pretty amazing book about General Alex Dumas, the son of a French count and one of his slaves who was born in Saint-Domingue (what's now Haiti) who rose to become one of the most powerful men in the French army before being screwed over by Napoleon.

He also is the father of someone you might have heard of: Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and, shockingly, The Count of Monte Cristo.  

A good percentage of the first part of the book is "did I mention Dumas was hot? because he was totally hot, like everyone thought so" which, haha, thanks for that, Reiss. ...No, seriously, my favorite section so far has been the part where Napoleon gets pissy because Dumas is hotter than him and everyone knows it:

When they were still both generals in the French Revolution, Napoleon celebrated Alex Dumas’s deeds in the classical terms favored at the time, proclaiming him the incarnation of Horatius Cocles, the ancient hero who saved the Roman Republic by keeping invading barbarians from crossing the Tiber. (French revolutionaries, like American ones, lived in a world of classical allusions—everyone referred to George Washington as Cincinnatus.)

When Napoleon launched the French invasion of Egypt, Dumas went as his cavalry commander, but it was there that the two very different soldiers came to loathe each other. The clash was ideological—Dumas saw himself as a fighter for world liberation, not world domination—but it was also personal. 

"Among the Muslims, men from every class who were able to catch sight of General Bonaparte were struck by how short and skinny he was," wrote the chief medical officer of the expedition. "The one, among our generals, whose appearance struck them more was…the General-in-Chief of the cavalry, Dumas. Man of color, and by his figure looking like a centaur, when they saw him ride his horse over the trenches, going to ransom prisoners, all of them believed that he was the leader of the expedition." 

Of course, Dumas, while brilliant at military strategy, does not seem to have known how to do politics at ALL, judging by his letters to Bonaparte during the Italy campaign. Oh, at first he is pretty smooth, sending Bonaparte letters that are pretty much "sir, sir! I am sure you will be SHOCKED to discover there is corruption in your army!" 

But then you get letters like this one, after Dumas pretty much wins the Siege of Mantua singlehandedly (he has two horse shot underneath him, and leads his ragged band of six hundred men against a stronghold that has been besieged for quite some time and is also in the ALPS) and gets offended when he's not recognized for his efforts: 

January 18, 1797,
GENERAL,

I have learned that the jack ass whose business it is to report to you upon the battle of the 27th [the 27 Nivose, i.e., January 16] stated that I stayed in observation throughout that battle. I don't wish any such observation on him, since he would have shit his pants.

Salute and Brotherhood!
ALEX. DUMAS

 

...Yeah, the 'jack ass' in question was General Berthier, Napoleon's right-hand man who'd later become his chief of staff.

That was....not a good idea, Dumas.......... I am beginning to see why you did not endear yourself to Napoleon.