If I enter the name of the Marquis de Montcalm on this list, it is because prophetic words have been attributed to him which at different periods have attracted no small attention. He was born near Nismes, in France, 1712, and died at Quebec, 14th September, 1759, being at the time commander of the French forces in Canada. As a soldier he was the peer of his opponent, Wolfe, who perished in the same battle, and they have since enjoyed a common fame.
In 1777, amidst the heats of our Revolutionary contest, a publication was put forth by Almon, the pamphleteer, in French and English on opposite pages, entitled “Letters from the Marquis de Montcalm, Governor-General of Canada, to Messrs. De Berryer and De la Molé, in the Years 1757, 1758, and 1759,” and the soldier reappeared as prophet.
The first letter is addressed to M. de Berryer, First Commissioner of the Marine of France, and purports to be dated at Montreal, 4th April, 1757. It contains the copy of an elaborate communication from “S. J.” of Boston, proposing a scheme for undermining the power of Great Britain in the Colonies by free trade with France through Canada, and predicting that “all our colonies in less than ten years will catch fire.”[382] In transmitting this letter Montcalm did little more than indorse its sentiments; but in his second letter to the same person, dated at Montreal, 1st October, 1758, he says:—
“All these informations, which I every day receive, confirm me in my opinion that England will one day lose her colonies on the continent of America; and if Canada should then be in the hands of an able governor who understands his business, he will have a thousand opportunities of hastening the event: this is the only advantage we can reap for all it has cost us.”[383]
In the third letter, addressed to M. Molé, First President of the Parliament of Paris, and dated at the camp before Quebec, 24th August, 1759, on the eve of the fatal battle in which both commanders fell, Montcalm mounts the tripod:—
“They are in a condition to give us battle, which I must not refuse, and which I cannot hope to gain.… The event must decide. But of one thing be certain, that I probably shall not survive the loss of the Colony.[384] … I shall at least console myself on my defeat, and on the loss of the Colony, by the full persuasion that this defeat will one day serve my country more than a victory, and that the conqueror, in aggrandizing himself, will find his tomb the country he gains from us.[385]… All the English Colonies would long since have shaken off the yoke, each province would have formed itself into a little independent republic, if the fear of seeing the French at their door had not been a check upon them.[386]… Canada, once taken by the English, would in a few years suffer much from being forced to be English.… They would soon be of no use to England, and perhaps they would oppose her.”[387]
At once, on their appearance, these letters played an important part in the “high life” of politics. The “Monthly Review”[388] called them “genuine.” The “Gentleman’s Magazine”[389] said that “the sagacity of this accomplished general was equal to his bravery,” and quoted what it characterized as a “remarkable prediction.” In the House of Lords, 30th May, 1777, during a debate begun by Lord Chatham, and flashing with great names, Lord Shelburne said that they “had been discovered to be a forgery”;[390] but Lord Mansfield, the illustrious Chief Justice, relied upon the letters, “which he insisted were not spurious.”[391] In another important debate in the House of Lords, 5th March, 1778, Earl Temple observed that “the authenticity of those letters had been often disputed; but he could affirm that he saw them in manuscript, among the papers of a minister now deceased, long before they made their appearance in print, and at a time when American independency was in the contemplation of a very few persons indeed.”[392] Such was the contemporary testimony; but the pamphlet shared the fate of the numerous brood engendered by the war.
Oblivion seemed to have settled on these letters, when their republication at Gibraltar, as late as 1858, by an author who treated them as genuine,[393] attracted the attention of Thomas Carlyle, who proceeded to make them famous again, by introducing them as an episode in his Life of Frederick, sometimes called “the Great.” Montcalm appears once more as prophet, and the readers of the career of the Prussian monarch turn with wonder to the inspired Frenchman, with “his power of faithful observation, his sagacity and talent of prophecy, so considerable.”[394] Then, quoting a portion of the last letter, the great author exclaims at different points: “Prediction first”; “This is a curiously exact prediction”; “Prediction second, which is still more curious.”[395]
If the letter quoted by Carlyle were genuine, as he accepted it, (also as it was evidently accepted by Lord John Russell,)[396] and as the family of Montcalm seem to believe, it would indicate for the soldier all that was claimed by his descendant, when, after speaking of his “political foresight,” he added that it “was proved by one of his letters, in which he made a remarkable prophecy concerning the American Revolution.”[397] Certainly,—if the letter is not an invention; but such is the present impression. On the half-title of the original pamphlet, in the Library of Harvard University, Sparks, whose judgment is of great weight, has written: “The letters are unquestionably spurious.” Others unite with him. It is impossible to read the papers in the “Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,” already quoted, and the pungent note of Henry Stevens, in his “Bibliotheca Historica,” under the title of the much-debated pamphlet, without feeling, that, whatever may have been the merits of Montcalm as a soldier, his title as a prophet cannot be accepted. His name is introduced here that I may not omit an instance which has attracted attention in more than one generation.