rival; to
continue as she had begun, in building up a naval power that could face
England on the seas and sustain her own rising colonies in America,
India, and the West Indies: for she too might have multiplied herself,
planted her language and her race over all the globe, and grown with the
growth of her children, had she not been at the mercy of an effeminate
profligate, a mistress turned procuress, and the favorites to whom they
delegated power.

Still, something must be done for the American war; at least there must
be a new general to replace Dieskau. None of the Court favorites wanted
a command in the backwoods, and the minister of war was free to choose
whom he would. His choice fell on Louis Joseph, Marquis de
Montcalm-Gozon de Saint-Veran.

Montcalm was born in the south of France, at the Chateau of Candiac,
near Nimes, on the twenty-ninth of February, 1712. At the age of six he
was placed in the charge of one Dumas, a natural son of his grandfather.
This man, a conscientious pedant, with many theories of education, ruled
his pupil stiffly; and, before the age of fifteen, gave him a good
knowledge of Latin, Greek, and history. Young Montcalm had a taste for
books, continued his reading in such intervals of leisure as camps and
garrisons afforded, and cherished to the end of his life the ambition of
becoming a member of the Academy. Yet, with all his liking for study, he
sometimes revolted against the sway of the pedagogue who wrote letters
of complaint to his father protesting against the "judgments of the
vulgar, who, contrary to the experience of ages, say that if children
are well reproved they will correct their faults." Dumas, however, was
not without sense, as is shown by another letter to the elder Montcalm,
in which he says that the boy had better be ignorant of Latin and Greek
"than know them as he does without knowing how to read, write, and speak
French well." The main difficulty was to make him write a good hand,--a
point in which he signally failed to the day of his death. So refractory
was he at times, that his master despaired. "M. de Montcalm," Dumas
informs the father, "has great need of docility, industry, and
willingness to take advice. What will become of him?" The pupil, aware
of these aspersions, met them by writing to his father his own ideas of
what his aims should be. "First, to be an honorable man, of good
morals, brave, and a Christian. Secondly, to read in moderation; to know
as m