Such is the anecdote--preserved in an old volume of French memoirs--of the childhood of him who subsequently became famous on two continents, and who for more than a hundred years past has been accounted one of the most redoubtable commanders of his age. If the story is true, certainly the Marquis de Montcalm did not carry out the splendid promise of his boyhood. He lived to fight the battles of his country with unflinching courage, with a tolerable amount of military skill, and with a tenacity of purpose that often achieved success against tremendous odds. But, unlike the great general to whom, during the last few weeks of his life, it was his fortune to be opposed, he never gave any evidence of possessing an original military genius--such a genius as would seem to have been possessed by the youth who figures in the foregoing anecdote. His chivalrous bravery, his high-bred courtesy, and, more than all, his untimely death, have done much to make his name famous in history, and to obscure certain features of character which we are not usually accustomed to associate with greatness. "History," says Cooper, "is like love, and is apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness. It is probable that Louis de Saint Veran will be viewed by posterity only as the gallant defender of his country, while his cruel apathy on the shores of the Oswego and the Horican will be forgotten." He was descended from a noble French family, and was born at the Chateau of Candiac, near Nismes, in southern France, on the 28th of February, 1712. Concerning his early years but few particulars have come down to us. He seems to have entered the army before he had completed his fourteenth year, and to have distinguished himself in various campaigns in Germany, Bohemia and Italy during the war for the Austrian succession. At the disastrous battle of Piacenza, in Italy, fought in the year 1746, he gained the rank of colonel; and in 1749 he became a brigadier-general. Seven years subsequent to the latter date he began to figure conspicuously in Canadian history, and from that time forward we are able to trace his career pretty closely. Early in 1756, having been elevated to the rank of a Field-Marshal--thus verifying the prediction of his old tutor--he was appointed successor to the Baron Dieskau in the chief command of the French forces in this country. He sailed from France early in April, and arrived at Quebec about a month afterwards. He was accompanied across the Atlantic by a large reinforcement, consisting of nearly 14,000 regular troops, and an ample supply of munitions of war. He at once began to set on foot those active operations against the British in America which were followed up with such unremitting vigilance throughout the greater part of the following three years.