General Montcalm was sent to
Quebec in
1756 as the commander of French troops in North America during the
French and Indian War. His early campaigns against the British were major successes. He expanded the defenses at
Fort Ticonderoga on
Lake Champlain. He
captured and destroyed Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario in 1756. His
victory at Fort William Henry in
1757 was a military and personal victory, but the conduct of his Mohawk allies made this a political loss. These actions were immortalized in
James Fenimore Cooper's novel
The Last of the Mohicans. It should also be noted that during the "massacre" at Fort William Henry, Montcalm was disgusted by the Mohawk slaughter of the English troops, and is said to have ridden out immediately upon hearing of it. He came to the scene and put an abrupt halt to the carnage, at one point even offering his own life for the lives of the prisoners. The "massacre", however is now under question due to new evidence of incorrect numbers that in the past were taken as fact. The event itself is, by some, now considered false, and an early use of propaganda by the British at that time.
Regardless, he led the French forces to victory at the
Battle of Carillon, facing and defeating a British army five times his size. It was considered his greatest victory, but the battle's outcome was due partly to the fact that the British commander,
James Abercrombie, failed to adapt his tactics when the initial frontal attacks proved insufficient to dislodge the defenders. Before and throughout the battle, Montcalm displayed a high level of military competence and leadership in all affairs regarding the fort itself and leading his men. However, Montcalm's feud with the governor of New France, Le marquis de Vaudreuil, severely hamstrung the defense of la Nouvelle-France as King Louis XV had few interests in America.
Later actions at Quebec were less successful and his army was defeated on the
Plains of Abraham (near
Quebec City) by the
British under
James Wolfe, but only after repelling the initial British landing at
Montmorency Falls several days before. Outnumbered and without Lévis' division, the battle lasted only 15 minutes outside the city's fortress. Wolfe fell on the Plains, and Montcalm died the day after the battle of his wounds (he had been shot in the abdomen), on
September 14, 1759, four days before the British entered Quebec. He was buried in the convent of the Ursuline nuns in Quebec, supposedly in a hole caused by the British shelling.
His remains, consisting of a skull and a leg bone, were exhumed in the 1800s and were put on display at the convent in a stone crypt alongside a plaque commemorating him. In a ceremony in September 2001, Montcalm's remains were buried in the cemetery of the Quebec General Hospital, where hundreds of casualties from both sides of the battle had been buried 242 years earlier.
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