Marquis de Montcalm
Louis-Joseph de Montcalm commanded the French forces in Canada and was killed defending Quebec. Born near Nîmes in 1712 into an old noble family, he was commissioned at nine in the customary manner, saw his first campaign at fifteen, and fought through the Wars of the Polish and Austrian Succession, being wounded five times at Piacenza in 1746 and taken prisoner. He was appointed to command in New France in 1756, an assignment nobody wanted, and arrived to find about four thousand regulars to defend a colony of some seventy thousand people against British colonies of well over a million. He was also placed under the governor, Vaudreuil, who was Canadian-born and who disagreed with him about everything. Montcalm wanted to concentrate on defending the St Lawrence corridor; Vaudreuil favoured the Canadian method of raiding with allied indigenous nations across a wide frontier. The two quarrelled continuously and their dispatches to Versailles undermined each other. He won a series of defensive victories: Oswego in 1756, Fort William Henry in 1757 — after which his indigenous allies killed and captured prisoners he had promised safe passage, an event he was unable to prevent and was blamed for — and Carillon in 1758, where about 3,600 men behind an abatis repulsed some 16,000 British. Wolfe landed above Quebec on the night of 12 September 1759, and Montcalm gave battle on the Plains of Abraham the next morning rather than wait for reinforcements. Both commanders were mortally wounded. He died the following day.
- Lived: 1712 CE – 1759 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: lieutenant_general, commander_in_chief_of_french_forces_in_new_france
