Chapter 74

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 Québec, at the Château St.-Louis. But the General Hospital was a mile out of the town, and in momentary danger of capture by the English; while the Château 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'église des Ursulines, fut enterré dans une fosse faite sous la chaire par le travail de la Bombe, M. le Marquis de Montcalm, décédé du matin à 4 heures après avoir reçu tous les Sacrements. Jamais Général n'avoit été plus aimé de sa troupe et plus universellement regretté. Il étoit d'un esprit supérieur, doux, gracieux, affable, familier à tout le monde, ce qui lui avoit fait gagner la confiance de toute la Colonie: requiescat in pace."

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

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."

The particulars of his burial are from the Acte Mortuaire du Marquis de Montcalm in the registers of the Church of Notre Dame de Québec, and from that valuable chronicle, Les Ursulines de Québec, composed by the Superior of the convent. A nun of the sisterhood, Mère Aimable Dubé de Saint-Ignace, was, when a child, a witness of the scene, and preserved a vivid memory of it to the age of eighty-one.

Appendix K.