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And, among all the Montcalms who made their name mean soldier's honour in Eastern or European war, none have given it so high a place in the world's history as the hero whose life and death in Canada made it immortal. He won the supreme glory for his name, a glory so bright that it shone even through the dust of death which shrouded the France of the Revolution.
It was open in front, showing his polished cuirass. The Grand Cross of St Louis glittered on his breast, over as brave a heart as any of the Montcalms had shown during centuries in the presence of the foe. From head to foot he looked the hero that he was; and he sat his jet-black charger as if the horse and man were one.
The Public said: "These are, all of them, Pitt's bolts, not yours, launched, or lying ready for launching, from that Olympian battery which, in the East and in the West, had already smitten down all Lallys and Montcalms; and had force already massed there, rendering your Havanas and Manillas easy for you.
How often this glorious badge of victory reminded our own Montcalm of noble deeds and noble men! How often it nerved him to uphold the family tradition! There are centuries of change between Crusaders and Canadians. Yet the Montcalms can bridge them with their honour.
'War is the grave of the Montcalms. No one can tell how old this famous saying is. Perhaps it is as old as France herself. Certainly there never was a time when the men of the great family of Montcalm-Gozon were not ready to fight for their king and country; and so Montcalm, like Wolfe, was a soldier born. Even in the Crusades his ancestors were famous all over Europe.
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.
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