The novel “The Countess of Salisbury” was written in 1839 and is one of Alexandre Dumas’s earliest historical novels. The story begins in the winter of 1338 at the court of the English King Edward III, who, after a dramatic banquet scene and a prepared heron—“Then I thought that the most timid of birds is fit to be eaten by the most cowardly of kings”—renews his claims to the French throne. Edward burns with passion for the beautiful Anne Grafton, but Anne is engaged to the Earl of Salisbury. Edward goes (in disguise) to Flanders, where he forms a military alliance with the local townspeople and with a number of continental princes. And he begins what will later unfold into the Hundred Years’ War with France…