The duty goes beyond the framework of the National Assembly in this series which revisits the highlights of our political history. Today, Montcalm’s death by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté.
Paris, 1901. The painter Suzor-Coté thinks about the painting he will submit to the competition to decorate the Red Room of the Quebec Parliament building. The artist from Arthabaskaville — now Victoriaville — could represent the founding of Quebec by Champlain, as his compatriot Henri Beau will do. He opts instead for the fall of New France embodied by the death of General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. What could be better than the agony of a man to embellish the debates of the Quebec “senate”?
“The theme of death was more acceptable at the time,” observes art historian Laurier Lacroix. “I understand that Suzor-Coté had chosen this theme as part of his studies. He would therefore have recycled a project on which he was already working, ”specifies the specialist at To have to.
The popularity of the Marquis de Montcalm was at its zenith when Suzor-Coté chose him for his future painting. The general then embodies the figure of the defeated martyr before the walls of the capital of the French empire in America at the end of an unequal struggle against the British invader. His statue has hung above the central door of the Quebec parliament since 1894… alongside its winner, James Wolfe.
funeral wake
Montcalm fought his last battle on the Plains of Abraham on the morning of September 13, 1759. Wounded in the arm and thigh by cannon shot, he was hit by a third bullet in the lower back during the rout of his army. The projectile passed through his kidneys before coming out through his lower abdomen, causing inflammation of the peritoneum. His agony will stretch over almost twenty hours.
Held in the saddle by three soldiers, the general crossed the Porte Saint-Louis under the distraught gaze of the civilians. Suzor-Coté could have immortalized this tragic moment. He also thought about it, as evidenced by one of his sketches where we see Montcalm represented in the guise of a wounded woman obviously serving as an allegory of New France. However, the artist prefers the intimacy of the house of the surgeon Arnoux.
The darkness of the piece reconstructed by Suzor-Coté contrasts with Montcalm’s white shirt (1) which reveals a thin trickle of blood. The scene is pretty clean considering the injuries sustained by the 47-year-old soldier. “The trunk was not pierced right through without considerable blood loss,” wrote Dr. Gabriel Nadeau in 1940 in a medico-historical analysis of the death of the famous marquis.
The calmness of the character sketched by Suzor-Coté is also surprising, considering the pain associated with his injury to the lower abdomen, which Nadeau compares to a stab wound. “It immediately becomes so violent that it masks all the other symptoms,” explains the doctor. The abdomen becomes stiff as wood. The diaphragm, which partitions the thorax and the abdomen, is also immobilized. And this pump piston stopping, the belly no longer participates in the movements of breathing. »
Montcalm gasps for breath as he thinks of his army being cut to pieces by General Wolfe’s British forces. “The patient is in extreme agitation of mind; but his intelligence is in no way clouded, specifies Dr. Nadeau. The eyes remain wide open and complete giving the face that facies so characteristic of peritonitis. The extremities cool and it is only when the trunk is taken in turn that the patient loses consciousness to die. »
Samurai
Suzor-Coté left no caption identifying the characters in his sketch. However, we recognize Mgr de Pontbriand (2) in his purple suit. The painter made a first mistake here by bringing the bishop into Quebec when the Canadian prelate had spent the summer of 1759 in Charlesbourg, behind the entrenched camp of Beauport.
The character in green (3) posted at the bedside of the dying could be the apothecary Joseph Arnoux or one of the army surgeons who announced to Montcalm that he would not be able to admire the sunrise the next day. “At least I won’t see the English in Quebec,” the marquis would then have replied, fond of witticisms.
Historian René Chartrand, consulted by The duty, is intrigued by the frock coat of the kneeling man (4) chatting with Montcalm. “It’s civilian clothes,” concludes the uniform specialist. As for the identity, it’s up to you! The most plausible candidate is Pierre Marcel, the marquis’ faithful aide-de-camp who served as his secretary and messenger since their arrival in Canada in 1756. “I did not leave him for a moment until his death” , will write this officer from the shadows.
“Thus Montcalm died; of the most atrocious and least desirable death and as a samurai would have liked to die: by the belly! »
The cuirass of the man dressed in red (5) testifies to the importance of this character immersed in his thoughts. It could be the commander of the garrison, the Montrealer Jean-Baptiste de Ramezay, who will sign the surrender of Quebec five days after the battle of the Plains of Abraham. However, the painter does him too much honor in his sketch by wearing him the sash of the Military Order of Saint-Louis.
The left of the room is occupied by a platoon of French soldiers from the Guyenne or Languedoc regiment, as the red facings (6) of their white uniforms seem to indicate. One of them is wrapped in bandages to illustrate the violence of the fighting on the Plains of Abraham, which left nearly 600 dead and wounded in Montcalm’s army. The survivors will take days to recover from the shock of their defeat which will prove decisive in the context of a colony suffocated by the blockade of the Royal Navy.
Suzor-Coté took two Ursulines (7) out of their cloister to allow them to witness Montcalm’s last moments. Their incongruous presence seems to announce the imminent burial of the general in the basement of their chapel, in a grave whose access will be facilitated by a British bomb passed through the floor during the summer.
Montcalm died before dawn on September 14, 1759 of “acute generalized peritonitis following a penetrating wound in the abdomen”, to use Gabriel Nadeau’s diagnosis. “Thus Montcalm died; of the most atrocious and least desirable death and as a samurai would have liked to die: by the belly! concludes the doctor.
Palm
Suzor-Coté’s unfinished work is the most realistic representation of the Marquis de Montcalm’s last moments. We are far from François Watteau’s drawing of 1779, which has the general die on the Plains of Abraham in the shade of a palm tree added by his engraver to enhance the exoticism associated with the American colonies.
Suzor-Coté invested himself thoroughly in his project, to the point of sculpting figurines to determine the ideal arrangement of his characters around Montcalm’s bed. The artist, however, put away his brushes before having crossed the stage of the sketch which he signed in 1902. “He seems to have abandoned this subject in favor of his painting celebrating Jacques Cartier”, explains Laurier Lacroix.
The way is clear for Henri Beau’s Champlain, which will eventually adorn the Parliament’s Red Room for nearly a quarter of a century before being supplanted by the Sovereign Council by Charles Huot. Suzor-Coté will not return to his Montcalm, which is now on display at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, a stone’s throw from the Wolfe Column. The work is thus at the rear of the British battle line that the French marquis tried in vain to cross on September 13, 1759.