of the Heights of Abraham (Sept. 12, 1759), in which Wolfe was killed and Montcalm mortally wounded. The French commander died two days later, while the place, with which his name and Wolfe’s are for ever associated, was still in the hands of the garrison.
Bibliography.—See Canada: History; and Seven Years’ War, also Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe. The chief French authorities are Pinard, Chronologie militaire, v. 616 (1762); Montcalm et le Canada français, by F. Joubleau (Paris, 1874) and C. de Bonnechose (Paris, 1877); Le Moine, La Mémoire de Montcalm vengée (Montreal, 1889).
MONTCEAU-LES-MINES, a town of east-central France, in the department of Saône-et-Loire, 14 m. S. by W. of Le Creusot on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906), town, 9701; commune, 26,305. Its importance is due chiefly to its position as the centre of the Blanzy coal basin, on the Canal du Centre, which, is connected with the coalfield by numerous lines of railway. Its manufacturing establishments include weaving and spinning factories, iron and copper foundries, and engineering workshops.
MONT CENIS, a pass (6893 ft.) in Savoy (France) which forms the limit between the Cottian and Graian Alps. A carriage road was built across it between 1803 and 1810 by Napoleon, while a light railway (named after its inventor, Mr. Fell, and worked by English engine-drivers) was opened alongside the road in 1868, but was destroyed in 1871, on the opening of the tunnel. This tunnel (highest point 4249 ft.) is really 17 m. west of the pass, below the Col de Fréjus. From Chambéry the line runs up the Isère valley, but soon bears through that of the Arc or the Maurienne past St Jean de Maurienne to Modane (61 m. from Chambéry). The tunnel is 8 m. in length, and leads to Bardonnèche, some way below which, at Oulx (18 m. from Modane) the line joins the road from the Mont Genèvre. Thence the valley of the Dora Riparia is followed to Turin (6412 m. from Modane). The carriage road mounts the Arc valley for 16 m. from Modane to Lanslebourg, whence it is 8 m. to the hospice, a little way beyond the summit of the pass. The descent lies through the Cenis valley to Susa (37 m. from Modane) where the road joins the railway. To the south-west of the Mont Cenis is the Little Mont Cenis (7166 ft.) which leads from the summit plateau (in Italy) of the main pass to the Étache valley on the French slope and so to Bramans in the Arc valley (7 m. above Modane). This pass was crossed in 1689 by the Vaudois, and by some authors is believed to have been “Hannibal’s Pass.” (W. A. B. C.)
MONTCHRÉTIEN, ANTOINE DE (1575 or 1576–1621), French
dramatist and economist, son of an apothecary at Falaise named
Mauchrestien, was born about 1576. In one of his numerous
duels he had the misfortune to kill his opponent. He consequently
took refuge in England, but through the influence of
James I., to whom he dedicated his tragedy, L’Écossaise, he
was allowed to return to France, and established himself at
Auxonne-sur-Loire, where he set up a steel foundry. In 1621
he abandoned this enterprise to serve on the Huguenot side
in the civil wars. He raised troops in Maine and Lower Normandy,
but was killed in a skirmish near Tourailles on the
8th of October 1621. There is no evidence that he shared the
religious opinions of the party for which he fought, and in
any case he belonged to the moderate party rallied round
Henry IV. In 1615 he published a valuable Traité de l’économie
politique, based chiefly on the works of Jean Bodin. He had the
good fortune to write before the pruning processes of Vaguelas
and Balzac had been applied to the language, and M. Lanson
praises him as one of the best prose-writers of his time.
His dramas are Sophonisbe (1596), afterwards remodelled as La Cartaginoise; L’Écossaise, Les Lacènes, David, Aman (in 1601); Hector (1604). As plays they have little technical merit, but they contain passages of great lyrical beauty. In L’Écossaise Elizabeth first pardons Mary Queen of Scots, and no explanation is given of the change that leads to her execution. Aman has been compared not too unfavourably with Esther, and the hatred of Haman for Mordecai is expressed with more vigour than in Racine’s play. All Montchrétien’s heroes face death without fear. M. Petit de Julleville finds the characteristic note of his plays in the same cult of heroism which was later to inspire the plays of Corneille. Poet, economist, iron-master, and soldier, Montchrétien represents the many-sided activity of a time before literature had become a profession, and before its province had been restricted in France to polite topics.
The tragedies were edited in 1901 by M. Petit de Julleville with notice and commentary; the Traité de l’économie politique in 1889 by Th. Funck Brentano, whose estimate of Montchrétien is severely criticized by W. I. Ashley in the Eng. Hist. Rev. (Oct. 1891). See also Émile Faguet, La Tragédie au XVIᵐᵉ siècle, ch. xi. (1883); G. Lanson, Revue des deux mondes (Sept. 1891).
MONTCLAIR, a town of Essex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., 5 m. N.N.W. of Newark. Pop. (1910 census) 21,550. It is served by the Erie and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railways, and by electric lines to Caldwell and Newark. It is situated at the base and on the slopes of the Orange Mountains (its altitude above the sea varying from 217 to about 665 ft.), has an irregular street plan, and is a residential suburb of New York and other neighbouring cities. Montclair has excellent public schools. Among the town’s institutions are the Mountainside hospital, a state normal school (1908), Montclair academy (1887), a public library, and two orphan asylums. An annual Bach festival was first held here in June 1905. The lower part of Montclair was settled about 1675 and gradually became known as Cranetown, which name it retained until 1812. In that year Bloomfield, including Cranetown, was organized as a separate township. In 1868 Cranetown, then popularly known as West Bloomfield, with the addition of the Dutch-settled Speertown, was incorporated as Montclair. Montclair became a town in 1894.
See Henry Whittemore, History of Montclair (New York, 1894).
MONT-DE-MARSAN, a town of south-west France, capital of the department of Landes at the confluence of the Midou and the Douze, 92 m. S. of Bordeaux on the Southern railway between Morcenx and Tarbes. Pop. (1906), 9059. Most of the buildings are in the older quarter, on the peninsula between the two rivers forming the Midouze. La Pépinière, a beautiful public garden, extends along the right bank of the Douze. A keep of the 14th century, now used for military purposes, was built by Gaston Phoebus, count of Foix, to overawe the inhabitants, and goes by the name of Nou-li-Bos (in modern French “Tu ne l’y veux pas”). The finest of the modern buildings is an officers’ club, which contains a small museum. A court of assizes sits in the town; the local institutions comprise a tribunal of first instance, a branch of the Bank of France, and a lycée. The industries include distillation of turpentine and resinous oils, tanning, the founding and forging of metal, wood-sawing, and manufactures of machinery and straw envelopes for bottles. There is trade in resin, wine, brandy, timber, cattle, horses and other live stock.
Mont-de-Marsan, the first of the Bastides (q.v.) of the middle ages, dates from 1141, when it was founded by Pierre, vicomte de Marsan, as the capital of his territory. In the 13th century it passed to the viscounts of Béarn, but the harsh rule of Gaston Phoebus and some of his successors induced the people to favour the English. The territory was united to the French Crown on the accession of Henry IV.
MONTDIDIER, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Somme, 23 m. S.E. of Amiens by rail. Pop. (1906), 4159. The town, situated on an eminence on the right bank of the Don, dates from the Merovingian period, and perhaps owes its name to the imprisonment of the Lombard king Didier in the 8th century. The church of St Pierre, dating chiefly from the 15th century, has a beautiful portal of the 16th century and contains the tomb of Raoul III., count of Crépy (12th century), fonts of the 11th century and other works of art. The church of St Sépulcre belongs, with the exception of the modern portal, to the 15th and 16th centuries. In the interior there is a well-known “ Holy Sepulchre ” of the
