M. Ricot, after carefully following out
the reasoning of his pupil, could find no weak point therein, and was fain
to admit that the Great Roman had been guilty of a huge blunder in
the arrangement of his forces. Fortunately for the General's military
reputation, the Gauls had been beaten in spite of his defective strategy,
and he himself had survived to transmit to posterity a rather egotistical
account of the affair. M. Ricot had been reading those "Commentaries"
all his life--reading them, as he supposed, critically--but he had never
lighted upon the discovery which his present pupil had made upon a first
perusal. Well might he exclaim, "Go to; the boy is a born generalissimo,
and is destined to be a marshal of France."
Such is the anecdote--preserved in an old volume of French memoirs--of the
childhood of him who subsequently became famous on two continents, and
who for more than a hundred years past has been accounted one of the most
redoubtable commanders of his age. If the story is true, certainly the
Marquis de Montcalm did not carry out the splendid promise of his boyhood.
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