A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. IVGuizot, François
History
A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. IV
Guizot, François
Great Britain -- History
Montcalm died also, eager even to the last moment to give his
orders and arouse the courage of his soldiers. "All is not lost,"
he repeated. When the surgeons announced to him that he had only
some hours to live, "So much the better," said he; "I shall not
see the surrender of Quebec." He was buried in the hole scooped
by a ball in the middle of the Ursuline church. It is there he
still sleeps. On one of the squares of the town, which became
English without the effacement of the tender memory of France,
Lord Dalhousie had a marble obelisk erected bearing the names of
Wolfe and Montcalm, with this inscription: "_Mortem virtus
communem, famam historia, momumentum posteritas dedit_." Their
courage has given them a common death; history, renown;
posterity, a monument.
{242}
Parliament decreed a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey to the
great conqueror of Quebec. The whole of England wore mourning.
With Quebec France had lost Canada. The impotent despair of M. de
Vaudreuil and the Duke de Levis, who were incapable of defending
Montreal, led them vainly to attempt to again seize the capital.
For a second time the Heights of Abraham were witnesses of a
bloody combat. The French troops blockaded the place. On both
sides, the arrival of reinforcements asked from Europe was being
awaited. The invincible hopefulness of our nation deluded the
Canadians. The English vessels entered the river. On the night of
the 16th to the 17th of May, the little French army raised the
siege; on the 8th of September, Montreal, in its turn, fell into
the hands of the conquerors.
At the same period, after long alternations of success and
reverse, England achieved a conquest in India which assured to
her forever the European empire of the East. An entire people,
passionately attached to the mother-country, had struggled in
Canada. In India, some eminent men had dreamed of establishing
the French power on the most solid foundations. They had
prosecuted their aims at the cost of all sacrifices, and one
after another they had fallen victim to their devotion as well as
to their reciprocal jealousy. Mahé de la Bourdonnais, governor of
the Isle of France, a clever, enterprising, honest man, and the
conqueror of Madras in 1746, had unfortunately engaged in a
rivalry with Dupleix, then governor-general of Pondicherry, which
had led both into grave errors.
[Image]
Death Of Wolfe.
{243}
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Madras to the English, but La
Bourdonnais, destitute, suspected, and consigned to the Bastile,
finally died of vexation, having used the last remnants of his
energy to disseminate suspicions against Dupleix, which were soon
to bear fruits fatal to that French greatness in India to which
M. de la Bourdonnais had formerly consecrated his life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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