Montreal is governed by a mayor and 36 aldermen, elected every two years. The city returns 5 members to the Dominion House of Commons and 6 to the Provincial Legislature of Quebec.
The population of Montreal, according to the census of 1901, was 266,826. With the suburbs, it was estimated in 1907 at over 405,000, about three-fifths French.
The history of the town is steeped in romance. From that first remarkable scene, so graphically described by Francis Parkman, when, on the 18th of May 1642, Maisonneuve and his little band of religious enthusiasts landed upon the spot where the Montreal Custom House now stands, and planted, in the words of the saintly Dumont, a grain of mustard seed destined to overshadow the land, the history of the town was to be intimately associated with missionary enterprise and such missionary heroism as the world has rarely seen. Montreal began as a religious colony, but its very situation, on the outer confines of civilization and at the door of the Iroquois country, forced it to become a military settlement, a fortified town with a military garrison. Similarly its position, even then an ideal one from a commercial point of view, made it the dominating centre of the fur-trade. For a hundred years after its foundation these three influences held sway, more or less mutually antagonistic, the streets of Montreal presenting an animated picture of sombre priests, and jovial soldiers, savage hunters in their native finery and more than half-savage fur traders. Within another hundred years, although both priests and soldiers were still to be seen on her streets, they had become but atoms in a larger and more varied population. The fur trader of New France, merged after the conquest in the fur trader of the North West Company which had its origin in Montreal—remained for a time the one picturesque survival of earlier and more romantic days. Finally, he too disappeared in the multiform and strenuous life of the modern city.
Bibliography.—Francis Parkman, Jesuits in North America and The Old Régime in Canada (Boston, new ed., 1902); Newton Bosworth, Hochelaga depicta (Montreal, 1846; repr. Toronto, 1901); A. Sandham, Montreal Past and Present (Montreal, 1870); W. D. Lighthall, Montreal after Two Hundred and Fifty Years (Montreal, 1892); N. M. Hinshelwood, Montreal and Vicinity (Montreal, 1904); S. E. Dawson, Handbook for the City of Montreal (Montreal, 1888); A. Leblond de Brumath, Histoire populaire de Montréal (Montreal, 1890); H. Beaugrand, Le Vieux Montréal (Montreal, 1884); Dollier de Casson, Histoire du Montréal, 1640–1672 (Montreal, 1868); J. D. Borthwick, Montreal, its history, &c. (Montreal, 1875). (L. J. B.)
MONTRÉSOR, CLAUDE DE BOURDEILLE, Comte de (c. 1606–1663), French intriguer and memoir-writer, was the grandnephew
of Pierre de Brantôme. He was the second favourite
of Gaston, duke of Orleans, the weak brother of Louis XIII.,
succeeding Antoine de Laage, duc de Puylaurens, in this position
in 1635. He planned the assassination of Cardinal Richelieu at
the camp of Amiens in 1636, a plan which failed through the
cowardice of Orleans. Montrésor was obliged to spend the next
six years on his estate, but in 1642 he entered into the plot of
Cinq Mars against Richelieu. On its failure he escaped to
England, but his estates were confiscated. Returning after
Richelieu’s death, he entered into the intrigues of the period
just preceding the Fronde, and was imprisoned in the Bastille,
then in Vincennes, having risked his safety by coming back from
exile in Holland to aid the duchess of Chevreuse. Mazarin
attempted to win him over in vain, but in 1653 he made his
submission to the victorious minister, and from that time on
played no part in public life. He had three children by Mlle de
Guise, with whom he had a lasting liaison.
His Mémoires have preserved his name from the oblivion otherwise awaiting such intriguers; they are written with naive frankness and are extremely interesting. They are printed by A. Petitot and Monmerqué in Collection des mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France (Paris, 1876).
MONTREUIL, GERBERT DE (fl. 13th century), French
trouvère, author of the Roman de la violette. He dedicated his
poem (c. 1221) to the Countess Marie of Ponthieu, wife of Simon,
count of Dammartin and a niece of Philip Augustus. The count
Gerard de Nevers of the story stakes his domains on the ddelity
of his wife Euriant. Lisiard by calumniating Euriant wins the
wager, but in the end the traitor is exposed, and, after many
adventures, Euriant is reinstated. Another version of the story
is given in the Roman du comte de Poitiers and in the tale in the
Decameron (ii. 9) on which Shakespeare founded Cymbeline.
Lyrics are inserted in the narrative of the Roman de la violette,
as they had been in the Conte de la rose (1200), known also as
Guillaume de Dole. A prose version, dating from the early 15th
century, provided Wilhelmine de Chézy with the material for her
libretto of Weber’s opera, Euryanthe (1823).
See Hist. litt. de la France, xxii. 82, xviii. 760, xxii. 826; Le comte de Poitiers (ed. F. Michel, 1831); Le Roman de la violette (ed. F. Michel, 1834); Le Conte de la rose (ed. Servois, 1893); F. Kraus, Über Gerbert de Montreuil (Erlangen, 1897); Rudolf Ohle, Shakespeares Cymbeline und seine romanischen Vorläufer (Berlin, 1890).
MONTREUIL-SOUS-BOIS, a town of northern France in the
department of Seine, 5 m. E. of Paris, on the slope and summit
of a hill, about 1 m. N. of Vincennes. Pop. (1906), 35,831.
Montreuil is specially noted for its extensive peach orchards.
The manufactures include paint, oils and varnish, glass and
chemical products.
MONTREUIL-SUR-MER, a town of northern France, capital
of an arrondissement in the department of Pas-de-Calais, 24 m.
S. by E. of Boulogne by rail. Pop. (1906), 2883. The town with
its old citadel and ramparts, due largely to Vauban, is prettily
situated on an eminence on the left bank of the Canche 10 m.
from the English Channel. The chief buildings are the church
of St Saulve (12th, 13th and 16th centuries), and a hospital
founded in 1200 and rebuilt in the 19th century, with a fine
chapel in the Flamboyant style. The buildings of the old abbey
of Ste Austreberthe, founded originally in the 11th century, still
remain. Montreuil is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a tribunal
of first instance and a preparatory infantry school. The town
owes its origin to a monastery established in the 7th century by
St Saulve, bishop of Amiens.
MONTREUX, the general name applied to the villages situated along the shore at the east of the Lake of Geneva in Switzerland, from Clarens to Veytaux: sometimes the name is specially given to Vernex only. These villages form part of 3 communes, those of Le Châtelard (including Clarens and Vernex) and of Les Planches (including Territet), while a bit (not Chillon) of that of Veytaux is alone included. The total population of this “agglomeration” was 14,144 in 1900, mostly French-speaking, while there were 9730 Protestants to 4301 Romanists and 55 Jews. There are railway stations at Clarens (15 m. south-east of Lausanne), at Vernex (12 m. on), and Territet (1 m. on, or 34 m. from Veytaux, which is 114 m. north of Villeneuve), as well as an electric tramway along the shore of the lake, and frequent communication over the lake by steamer. From Territet there is a mountain railway past Glion and Caux nearly to the top of the Rochers de Naye (6710 ft.), while from Vernex the Montreux-Bernese-Oberland railway mounts past Les Avants, pierces the ridge of the Col de Jaman by a tunnel, and so reaches (14 m.) Montbovon in the Gruyére portion of the upper Sarine valley. At first foreigners were attracted by the cheapness and good air of the region, added to the grape cure. As the delights of clear, cold weather in winter and of tobogganing (here called “luging”) and skiing became appreciated, the higher hotels (such as Les Avants, Caux, Glion) were frequented at that season, as well as at other times. It is stated that in 1902 31,473 foreigners (in 1903, 39,493) visited Montreux, 7634 being Germans, 7327 English, and 5651 French. Montreux was not a Roman settlement, but otherwise its history is similar to that of Vevey.
MONTROND, CASIMIR, Comte de (1768–1843), French diplomatic agent, was the son of a military officer; his mother, Angélique Marie d’Arlus, comtesse de Montrond (d. 1827), was a royalist writer, said to be the author of the Troubadour béarnois, a song which has the refrain “Louis, le fils de Henri, Est prisonnier dans Paris.” Casimir was imprisoned in 1794 in St Lazare, where he met the divorced duchesse de Fleury (née Franquetot de
