The following is a translation of the inscription and epitaph written by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres of Paris in 1761, and inscribed on a monument which that body had designed to erect in Quebec, but which never reached that city, the vessel on which it had been embarked having been lost at sea:
“Here Lieth
In either hemisphere to live for ever,
LEWIS JOSEPH DE MONTCALM GOZON,
Marquis of St. Véran, Baron of Gabriac,
Commander of the Order of St. Lewis,
Lieutenant-General of the French army;
not less an excellent citizen than soldier,
who knew no desire but that of
TRUE GLORY;
Happy in a natural genius, improved by literature;
Having gone through the several steps of military honours
with an uninterrupted lustre;
skilled in all the arts of war,
the juncture of the times and the crisis of danger;
In Italy, in Bohemia, in Germany,
an indefatigable general:
He so discharged his important trusts,
that he seemed always equal to still greater.
At length, grown bright with perils,
sent to secure the province of Canada,
with a handful of men,
he more than once repulsed the enemy’s forces,
and made himself master of their forts,
replete with troops and ammunition.
Inured to cold, hunger, watching and labours,
unmindful of himself,
he had no sensation but for his soldiers:
An enemy with the fiercest impetuosity;
a victor with the tenderest humanity;
adverse fortune he compensated with valour;
the want of strength with skill and activity;
and, with his counsel and support,
for four years protracted the impending
fate of the colony.
Having, with various artifices,
long baffled a great army,
headed by an expert and intrepid commander,
and a fleet furnished with all warlike stores,
compelled at length to an engagement,
he fell—in the first rank—in the first onset,
warm with those hopes of religion
which he had always cherished;
to the inexpressible loss of his own army,
and not without the regret of the enemy’s,
XIV September, A.D. MDCCLIX.
Of his age, XLVIII.
His weeping countrymen
deposited the remains of their excellent General in a grave
which a fallen bomb in bursting had excavated for him,
recommending them to the generous faith of their enemies.”
Had his counsel been taken by de Vaudreuil, we never could bare occupied Point Levi, and in all probability the expedition to Quebec would have failed.
There is something exceedingly touching in the death of the two generals in the same battle. My guide, however, was more interested in calling my attention to the ornaments of the altar, and to a skull, which he assured me was that of Montcalm.
“Through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passion’s host that never brook’d control,”
was seen filled with dust, and the priest held in his hand, like a cricket-ball, the home of the subtle intellect of the man who raised to such a height the power of France in the western world. When the old Indian chief told Montcalm—“Tu es petit! mais je vois dans tes yeux la hauteur du chêne et la vivacité des yeux des aigles,” how little the politic, gallant Frenchman ever thought his skull would be kept in a box in a priest’s cupboard, and shown as a curiosity to strangers from that barbarous Britain.
I cannot say that the priest succeeded in pointing out anything as interesting among the pictures as even the skull of the Marquis de Montcalm.
So far as I can ascertain, no Canadian painter has yet been inspired by the faith and devotion which wrought such miracles and wonders in mediæval Europe, to concentrate his talents on church pictures.