children. As kings, marquises, heirs, and pensions were
among the things the Revolution hated most, it is a
notable tribute to our Marquis of Montcalm that the
revolutionary parliament should have paid to his heirs
the pension granted by a king. Nor has another century
of change in France blotted out his name and fame. The
Montcalm was the French flagship at the naval review held
in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII. The
Montcalm took the President of France to greet his ally
the Czar of Russia. And, but for a call of duty elsewhere
at the time, the Montcalm would have flown the French
admiral's flag in 1908, at the celebration of the
Tercentenary of the founding of Quebec, when King George
V led the French- and English-speaking peoples of the
world in doing honour to the twin renown of Wolfe and
Montcalm on the field where they won equal glory, 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