Military officer; born
[
250]
at the
Chateau Candiac, near
Nismes, France, Feb. 28, 1712.
Well educated, he entered the
French army at the age of fourteen years, distinguished himself in
Germany in the
War of the
Austrian Succession, and gained the rank of colonel for his conduct in the disastrous battle of
Piacenza, in Italy, in 1746.
In 1756 he was appointed to the command of the
French troops in
Canada, where, in the three campaigns which he conducted, he displayed skill, courage, and humanity.
Weakly seconded by his government, he did not accomplish what he might have done.
He prepared, with all the means at his command, for the struggle for the supremacy of French dominion in
America, in 1759, in which he lost his life.
He had
resolved, he said, “to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” and such was his fate.
The
English had spared nothing to make the campaign a decisive one.
The final struggle occurred in
Quebec, and there, on Sept. 13, 1759, he was mortally wounded, and died the next day.
Wolfe, the commander of the
English, was mortally wounded at the same time.
When
Montcalm was told that his death was near, he calmly replied, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of
Quebec.”
A fine monument stands on
Cape Diamond, at
Quebec, erected to the memory of both
Montcalm and
Wolfe.
The skull of
Montcalm, with a military coat-collar of blue velvet embroidered with gold lace, is preserved in the Ursuline convent at
Quebec.
See
Quebec;
Wolfe, James.
