Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources: Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"Russell, William Howard, Sir
History
Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources: Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"
Russell, William Howard, Sir
Canada -- Defenses; Canada -- Description and travel
The following is a translation of the inscription and epitaph
written by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres of Paris
in 1761, and inscribed on a monument which that body had designed
to erect in Quebec, but which never reached that city, the vessel
on which it had been embarked having been lost at sea:
“HERE LIETH
In either hemisphere to live for ever,
LEWIS JOSEPH DE MONTCALM GOZON,
Marquis of St. Véran, Baron of Gabriac,
Commander of the Order of St. Lewis,
Lieutenant-General of the French army;
not less an excellent citizen than soldier,
who knew no desire but that of
TRUE GLORY;
Happy in a natural genius, improved by literature;
Having gone through the several steps of military honours
with an uninterrupted lustre;
skilled in all the arts of war,
the juncture of the times and the crisis of danger;
In Italy, in Bohemia, in Germany,
an indefatigable general:
He so discharged his important trusts,
that he seemed always equal to still greater.
At length, grown bright with perils,
sent to secure the province of Canada,
with a handful of men,
he more than once repulsed the enemy’s forces,
and made himself master of their forts,
replete with troops and ammunition.
Inured to cold, hunger, watching and labours,
unmindful of himself,
he had no sensation but for his soldiers:
An enemy with the fiercest impetuosity;
a victor with the tenderest humanity;
adverse fortune he compensated with valour;
the want of strength with skill and activity;
and, with his counsel and support,
for four years protracted the impending
fate of the colony.
Having, with various artifices,
long baffled a great army,
headed by an expert and intrepid commander,
and a fleet furnished with all warlike stores,
compelled at length to an engagement,
he fell--in the first rank--in the first onset,
warm with those hopes of religion
which he had always cherished;
to the inexpressible loss of his own army,
and not without the regret of the enemy’s,
XIV September, A.D. MDCCLIX.
Of his age, XLVIII.
His weeping countrymen
deposited the remains of their excellent General in a grave
which a fallen bomb in bursting had excavated for him,
recommending them to the generous faith of their enemies.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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