Montcalm and Wolfe eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 931 pages of information about Montcalm and Wolfe.

Montcalm and Wolfe eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 931 pages of information about Montcalm and Wolfe.

Among several manuscript maps and plans showing the operations of the siege may be mentioned one entitled, Plan of the Town and Basin of Quebec and Part of the Adjacent Country, shewing the principal Encampments and Works of the British Army commanded by Major Gen’l.  Wolfe, and those of the French Army by Lieut.  Gen’l. the Marquis of Montcalm.  It is the work of three engineers of Wolfe’s army, and is on a scale of eight hundred feet to an inch.  A facsimile from the original in possession of the Royal Engineers is before me.

Among the “King’s Maps,” British Museum (CXIX. 27), is a very large colored plan of operations at Quebec in 1759, 1760, superbly executed in minute detail.

Appendix J

Chapter 28.  Fall of Quebec

Death and Burial of Montcalm.—­Johnstone, who had every means of knowing the facts, says that Montcalm was carried after his wound to the house of the surgeon Arnoux.  Yet it is not quite certain that he died there.  According to Knox, his death took place at the General Hospital; according to the modern author of the Ursulines de Quebec, at the Chateau St.-Louis.  But the General Hospital was a mile out of the town, and in momentary danger of capture by the English; while the Chateau had been made untenable by the batteries of Point Levi, being immediately exposed to their fire.  Neither of these places was one to which the dying general was likely to be removed, and it is probable that he was suffered to die in peace at the house of the surgeon.

It has been said that the story of the burial of Montcalm in a grave partially formed by the explosion of a bomb, rests only on the assertion in his epitaph, composed in 1761 by the Academy of Inscriptions at the instance of Bougainville.  There is, however, other evidence of the fact.  The naval captain Foligny, writing on the spot at the time of the burial, says in his Diary, under the date of September 14:  “A huit heures du soir, dans l’eglise des Ursulines, fut enterre dans une fosse faite sous la chaire par le travail de la Bombe, M. le Marquis de Montcalm, decede du matin a 4 heures apres avoir recu tous les Sacrements.  Jamais General n’avoit ete plus aime de sa troupe et plus universellement regrette.  Il etoit d’un esprit superieur, doux, gracieux, affable, familier a tout le monde, ce qui lui avoit fait gagner la confiance de toute la Colonie:  requiescat in pace.”

The author of Les Ursulines de Quebec says:  “Un des projectiles ayant fait une large ouverture dans le plancher de bas, on en profita pour creuser la fosse du general.”

The Boston Post Boy and Advertiser, in its issue of Dec. 3, 1759, contains a letter from “an officer of distinction” at Quebec to Messrs. Green and Russell, proprietors of the newspaper.  This letter contains the following words:  “He [Montcalm] died the next day; and, with a little Improvement, one of our 13-inch Shell-Holes served him for a Grave.”

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Montcalm and Wolfe from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.