18th-century type, who saw and attempted to see nothing except that Bavaria had always been threatened by the house of Habsburg, had been supported by Prussia for purely selfish reasons, and could look for useful support against these two only from France, who had selfish reasons of her own for wishing to counterbalance the power both of Austria and Prussia in Germany. As late as 1813, when Napoleon’s power was visibly breaking down, and Montgelas knew the internal weakness of his empire well from visits to Paris, he still continued to maintain that France was necessary to Bavaria. The decision of the king to turn against Napoleon in 1814 was taken under the influence of his son and of Marshal Wrede rather than of Montgelas, though the minister would not have been influenced by any feeling of sentimentality to adhere to an ally who had ceased to be useful. In internal affairs Montgelas carried out a policy of secularization and of administrative centralization often by brutal means, which showed that he had never wholly renounced his opinions of the time of the Enlightenment movement. His enemies persuaded the king to dismiss him in 1817, and he spent the remainder of his life in retirement till his death in 1838. He had married the countess von Arco in 1803, and had eight children, in 1809 he was made a count.
See Denkwürdigkeiten des bayr. Staatsministers Maximilian Graf von Montgelas, a German version of the French original, ed. by Ludwig Graf v. Montgelas (Stuttgart, 1887); Briefe des Stadtsministers Grafen Montgelas, ed. by Julie von Zerzog (Regensburg, 1853); Dumoulin Eckart, Bayern unter dem Ministerium Montgelas (Munich, 1894).
MONT GENÈVRE, a very easy and remarkable pass (6083 ft.) between France and Italy, which is now considered by high authorities to have been crossed by Hannibal, as it certainly was by Julius Caesar, Charles VIII., and in the war of 1859. An excellent carriage-road mounts in 7 m. from Briançon, at the very head of the Durance valley, to the pass. On the French side of the divide is the village of Bourg Mont Genévre, and on the Italian side that of Clavières, both inhabited all the year round, as the pass runs east and west, and is thus sheltered from the north wind. A descent of 5 m. leads down to Césanne in the Doria Riparia valley, which is followed for 5 m. more to Oulx (17 m. from Briançon), on the Mont Cenis railway.
MONTGOMERIE, ALEXANDER (c. 1550–c. 1610), Scottish poet, was the second son of Hugh Montgomerie of Hessilhead, Ayrshire, and was born about the middle of the 16th century.[1] He spent some part of his youth in Argyleshire and afterwards lived for a time at Compston Castle, in Galloway. He was in the service of the regent Morton; thereafter, on the regent’s demission of office in 1578, in that of the king, James VI. In 1583 the grant by the Crown of a pension of 500 marks was confirmed; and three years later he set out on a tour through France, Flanders and other countries. He appears to have got into trouble, to have been imprisoned abroad, and to have lost favour at the Scottish court, and (for a time) his pension. We have no record of his closing years.
Montgomerie’s chief poem is the Cherry and the Slae, first printed in 1597 (two impressions). It was frequently reprinted in the 17th and 18th centuries, and appeared twice in Latin guise in 1631, in Dempster’s Cerasum et sylvestre prunum, opus poematicum. It is included in the collected edition of Montgomerie’s Poems, by David Irving (1821), and by James Cranstoun, for the Scottish Text Society (1887). The text in the latter is a composite of 930 lines from the second impression of 1597 (u.s.) and 666 lines from the version in Allan Ramsay’s (q.v.) Ever Green (1724); but a better text, from a MS. in the Laing collection in the university of Edinburgh, has been prepared (1907) for the Scottish Text Society by Mr George Stevenson. The poem, written in the complicated alliterative fourteen-lined stanza, is a confused allegory—the confusion being due to the fact that sections of the poem were written at different times—on Youth’s choice between a richly laden cherry-tree on a high crag and a sloe “bush” at his feet. His other poems are: The Flyting betwixt Montgomery and Polwart (1629; 1st ed., 1621), which reproduces the literary habit of the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie; a series of 70 sonnets; a large number of miscellaneous poems, amatory and devotional; and The Mindes Melodie, Contayning certayne Psalmes of the Kinglie Prophete Dayvid, applyed to a new pleasant tune (Edinburgh, 1605). The formal value of Montgomerie’s verse was fittingly acknowledged by James VI. in his early critical essay Ane Schort Treatise conteining some reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie, where the author makes three quotations from Montgomerie’s poems, then in circulation in manuscript. Montgomerie had written a sonnet to his majesty, which is prefixed to the Essayes of a Prentise.
Montgomerie stands apart from the courtier-poets Ayton, Stirling, and others, who write in the literary English of the South. He carries on the Middle Scots tradition, and was not without influence in the vernacular revival, in Allan Ramsay and his successors. (G. G. S.)
MONTGOMERY, GABRIEL, SEIGNEUR DE LORGES, Comte de (c. 1530–1574), French soldier, became a lieutenant
in the king of France’s Scottish guards, of which his father
was captain, and engaged in police operations against the
Protestants. Having inadvertently caused the death of King
Henry II. in a tournament (June 30, 1559) he was disgraced
and retired to his estates in Normandy. He studied theological questions and espoused the cause of the Reformers. In 1562 he allied himself with the prince of Condé, took Bourges, and defended Rouen from September to October 1562 against the royal army. In the third War of Religion he occupied Béarn and Bigorre (1569). Escaping from the massacre of St Bartholomew, he went to England and returned with a fleet for the relief of La Rochelle (1573), but soon had to withdraw to Cornwall. Returning to Normandy in 1574, he defended Domfront, which was being besieged by Marshal de Matignon, but was forced to capitulate on the 25th of May. He was sentenced to death by the parlement, and beheaded in Paris on the 26th of June 1574.
See L. Marlet, Le Comte de Montgomery (Paris, 1890).
MONTGOMERY, JAMES (1771–1854), British poet and
journalist, son of a Moravian minister, was born on the 4th of November 1771, at Irvine in Ayrshire, Scotland. Part of his boyhood was spent in Ireland, but he received his education in Yorkshire, at the Moravian school of Fulneck near Leeds. He edited the Sheffield Iris for more than thirty years. When he began his career the position of a journalist who held pronounced views on reform was a difficult one, and he twice suffered imprisonment (in 1795 and 1796). His Wanderer of Switzerland (1806), describing the French occupation, attracted considerable attention. The author was described by Lord Byron in a footnote to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, as “a man of considerable genius,” whose Wanderer of Switzerland
was worth a thousand “Lyrical Ballads.” The book had
been mercilessly ridiculed by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (1807), but in spite of this Montgomery achieved a wide popularity with his later volumes of verse: The West Indies (1810); The World Before the Flood (1812); Greenland (1819); Songs of Zion (1822); The Pelican Island (1826). On account of the religious character of his poetry, he is sometimes confounded with Robert Montgomery, very much to the injustice of his reputation. His verses were dictated by the inspiring force of humanitarian sentiment, and he was especially eloquent in his denunciation of the slave trade. The influence of
Campbell is apparent in his earlier poems, but in the Pelican Island, his last and best Work as a poet, he evidently took Shelley as his model. His reputation now rests chiefly on his hymns, about a hundred of which are still in current use. His Lectures on Poetry and General Literature (1833) show considerable breadth of sympathy and power of expression. A pension of
- ↑ Alexander’s brother, Robert Montgomerie (d. 1609), was made bishop or archbishop, of Glasgow, in 1581, an appointment which was strongly objected to by the General Assembly. The long struggle which ensued was only terminated by Montgomerie’s resignation of the see in 1587.
