The beginning of the events resurrected in the novel is set by the author in 1585, a time when France was ravaged by religious and civil wars and a real threat of disintegration hung over the French monarchy due to noble conspiracies, peasant uprisings, and urban revolts. In that period, exacerbated class contradictions led to a new wave of bloody wars, which some historians call the “War of the Three Henrys”—that is, King Henry III of France, the Duke of Guise of Lorraine, and Henry of Navarre—three main heroes of Alexander Dumas’s famous trilogy.
In the final novel of the trilogy, the writer creates an impressive picture of the doom of the House of Valois, shows absolute degeneration of this dynasty, and draws the pitiable figure of Henry III, whom could no longer be saved—neither by the public execution of the political criminal Salcedo, nor by forty-five mounted bodyguards (hence the title of the novel).