The novel was lost until 1990, when the Dumas expert Claude Schopp discovered references to its material and finally the newspaper serial in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale.
Schopp's articles on Dumas' work have been part of a critical reappraisal of the writer, contributing to the government's honoring the author in 2002 by a reinterment ceremony at the Panthéon de Paris.
Le Salut de l'Empire, a sequel written by Schopp incorporating additional Dumas materials, was published in French in 2008.
Similarly, in 2002 Reginald Hamel, a Canadian scholar, found Dumas' unpublished five-act play The Gold Thieves in the Bibliothèque Nationale.
[2] The swashbuckling historical novel takes place after the events of the French Revolution and during the subsequent rise of the Napoleonic Empire.
Dumas imagines his main character killing the British admiral Horatio Nelson after his victory during the Battle of Trafalgar against the French and Spanish navies.