Details
The Montgomery family appear to have originally been French or Norman-French but held lands in Celtic Ireland as Protestants. The Montgomery and à Cleeve families were related through the Ranelaghs.
John Montgomery had gone into the army after being educated at Trinity College, Dublin.
The letter of Richard Montgomery (Chapter I) gives a résumé of the military situation as it stood on the 12th May, 1758. The Hon. Edward Boscawen, Admiral of the Blue (b. Cwll 1712 – 1761), MP for Truro but not mentioned in the novel, and Colonel Jeffrey Amherst, recalled from Germany, were to take the French stronghold of Louisbourg. Q has Richard Montgomery included in this venture. In a letter from Halifax, Montgomery prophesies that he will enter Quebec as a Brigadier-General (Chapter I). The prophecy is fulfilled in December 1775, with his body being carried from the Près-de-Ville to the temporary mortuary in St. Louis Street (Chapter XXVII). The historical Richard Montgomery entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1754, but sought a military career before completing his studies. As a member of the 17th Regiment of Foot he went with Forbes from Halifax to Louisbourg in 1758, after which he fought with Amherst in the taking of Fort Carillon in 1759 and entered Montreal in 1760.
The letter of Richard Montgomery (Chapter I) gives a résumé of the military situation as it stood on the 12th May, 1758.
The Hon. Edward Boscawen, Admiral of the Blue (b. Cwll 1712 – 1761), MP for Truro but not mentioned in the novel, and Colonel Jeffrey Amherst, recalled from Germany, were to take the French stronghold of Louisbourg. Q has Richard Montgomery included in this venture. In a letter from Halifax, Montgomery prophesies that he will enter Quebec as a Brigadier-General (Chapter I). The prophecy is fulfilled in December 1775, with his body being carried from the Près-de-Ville to the temporary mortuary in St. Louis Street (Chapter XXVII).
The historical Richard Montgomery entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1754, but sought a military career before completing his studies. As a member of the 17th Regiment of Foot he went with Forbes from Halifax to Louisbourg in 1758, after which he fought with Amherst in the taking of Fort Carillon in 1759 and entered Montreal in 1760.
Q uses Richard Montgomery, in Chapter I, as a vehicle for delineating the character of John à Cleeve, as they are fundamentally opposites. Montgomery is an extrovert, practical and efficient, sure of his opinions and untroubled by deeper issues. À Cleeve is an introvert, who questions himself and his place in the world, yet is capable of considerable exertions. The relationship, hero worship on one side, is similar to that of George Vyell and Taffy Raymond in The Ship of Stars. And it is ultimately Vyell and Montgomery who come to grief.
À Cleeve has a reflective and morally sensitive nature, however, this does not prevent him from acts of considerable courage on occasions of great carnage. By contrast, Montgomery possesses the courage and the activity, but not the reflectiveness.
Richard Montgomery could no more have a relationship with Diane des Noel-Tilly or Azoka than could John à Cleeve with the American colonial and Protestant families of Schuyler and Livingstone. The reader first meets the Schuylers of Albany when the British are marching up the Hudson River to Lake George in June 1758 (Chapter I) and Philip Schuyler sits in one of the lead boats sailing across the lake waters. Yet it is into the Schuyler family that Richard Montgomery marries when he becomes a leader of American forces in 1775. 43 years later he returns as dust and ashes in Epilogue I, with his widow looking on from a window in their former home. The anti-war theme could not have been more clearly played.