Isaac de Portau dit Porthos is a French soldier born in Pau on February 2, 1617 and died on an unknown date. He inspired Alexandre Dumas with the fictional character of Porthos in the novel The Three Musketeers.
He comes from a Protestant family from Béarn, originally from Audaux (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). His father was secretary to the King and States of Navarre, therefore an important figure, who was able to buy lordships and be ennobled.
Like Athos, Porthos goes to the army, and begins by entering, as a cadet in the French Guards, company of Essarts (François de Guillon, lord of Essarts, is the brother-in-law of M. de Tréville, who recommended it). He was therefore in this company when D'Artagnan entered it in turn in 1640, and they thus campaigned together. We find him there in 1642 in Perpignan then in Lyon. In 1643, Porthos passed to the Musketeers, the very year of Athos' death. We will then find him guarding ammunition at the fortress of Navarrenx (Pyrénées Atlantiques)
Then his trace is lost, and no one knows what became of him afterwards, nor the circumstances of his death.
Novel character
Alexandre Dumas created the character of Porthos in The Three Musketeers in 1844 and made him a man endowed with Herculean strength, a faithful companion, simple and upright, rough and good, but also without great delicacy and vain. His real name is the Sieur (or Monsieur) du Vallon and chapter 12 of Vingt ans après indicates without first name his full name “M. Porthos du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds” and tells his story. He left the service after the siege of La Rochelle, married and became Monsieur de Bracieux and de Pierrefonds, before reuniting with D'Artagnan and the other musketeers twenty years later for a new adventure, at the end of which he obtained from Mazarin the title of barons. In Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, he is the first of the musketeers to disappear, crushed by a rock.