The Passing of New France | Page 2

though unequal fortune.
Montcalm was a leap-year baby, having been born on February 29,
1712, in the family castle of Candiac, near Nimes, a very old city of the

south of France, a city with many forts built by the Romans two
thousand years ago. He came by almost as much good soldier blood on
his mother's side as on his father's, for she was one of the Castellanes,
with numbers of heroic ancestors, extending back to the First Crusade.
The Montcalms had never been rich. They had many heroes but no
millionaires. Yet they were well known and well loved for their
kindness to all the people on their estates; and so generous to every one
in trouble, and so ready to spend their money as well as their lives for
the sake of king and country, that they never could have made great
fortunes, even had their estate been ten times as large as it was.
Accordingly, while they were famous and honoured all over France,
they had to be very careful about spending money on themselves. They
all--and our own Montcalm in particular--spent much more in serving
their country than their country ever spent in paying them to serve it.
Montcalm was a delicate little boy of six when he first went to school.
He had many schoolboy faults. He found it hard to keep quiet or to pay
attention to his teacher; he was backward in French grammar; and he
wrote a very bad hand. Many a letter of complaint was sent to his father.
'It seems to me,' writes the teacher, 'that his handwriting is getting
worse than ever. I show him, again and again, how to hold his pen; but
he will not do it properly. I think he ought to try to make up for his
want of cleverness by being more docile, taking more pains, and
listening to my advice.' And then poor old Dumas would end with an
exclamation of despair--'What will become of him!'
Dumas had another pupil who was much more to his taste. This was
Montcalm's younger brother, Jean, who knew his letters before he was
three, read Latin when he was five, and Greek and Hebrew when he
was six. Dumas was so proud of this infant prodigy that he took him to
Paris and showed him off to the learned men of the day, who were
dumbfounded at so much knowledge in so young a boy. All this,
however, was too much for a youthful brain; and poor Jean died at the
age of seven.
Dumas then turned sadly to the elder boy, who was in no danger of
being killed by too much study, and soon renewed his complaints. At

last Montcalm, now sixteen and already an officer, could bear it no
longer, and wrote to his father telling him that in spite of his supposed
stupidity he had serious aims. 'I want to be, first, a man of honour,
brave, and a good Christian. Secondly, I want to read moderately; to
know as much Greek and Latin as other men; also arithmetic, history,
geography, literature, and some art and science. Thirdly, I want to be
obedient to you and my dear mother; and listen to Mr Dumas's advice.
Lastly, I want to manage a horse and handle a sword as well as ever I
can.' The result of it all was that Montcalm became a good Latin
scholar, a very well read man, an excellent horseman and swordsman,
and--to dominie Dumas's eternal confusion--such a master of French
that he might have been as great an author as he was a soldier. His
letters and dispatches from the seat of war remind one of Caesar's. He
wrote like a man who sees into the heart of things and goes straight to
the point with the fewest words which will express exactly what he
wishes to say. In this he was like Wolfe, and like many another great
soldier whose quick eye, cool head and warm heart, all working
together in the service of his country, give him a command over words
which often equals his command over men.
In 1727, the year Wolfe was born, Montcalm joined his father's
regiment as an ensign. Presently, in 1733, the French and Germans fell
out over the naming of a king for Poland. Montcalm went to the front
and had what French soldiers call his 'baptism of fire.' This war gave
him little chance of learning how great battles should be fought. But he
saw two sieges; he kept his eyes open to everything that happened; and,
even in camp, he did not forget his studies. 'I am learning German,' he
wrote home, 'and I am reading more Greek than I have read for three or
four years.'
The death