more than clever improvizations. A libellous attack on Quevedo, entitled El Tribunal de la justa venganza (1635), is often ascribed to him.
MONTALEMBERT, CHARLES FORBES RENÉ DE (1810–1870), French publicist and historian, was born on the 15th of March 1810. The family was a very ancient one, belonging to Poitou, or rather to Angoumois. Direct descent is said to be traced back to the 13th century, and charters carry the
history of the house two centuries further. For some generations before the historian the family had been distinguished, not merely in the army, but for scientific attainments. Montalembert’s
father, Marc René, emigrated, fought under Condé,
and subsequently served in the English army; he married Elise
Rosée Forbes, and his eldest son, Charles, was born in London.
At the Restoration of 1814 Marc René returned to France, was
raised to the peerage in 1810, and became ambassador to Sweden
(where Charles completed his education) in 1826. He died in
1831, a year after the overthrow of the legitimate monarchy.
Charles de Montalembert was too young to take his seat as a peer
(twenty-five being the necessary age), but he retained other
rights, and this, combined with his literary and intellectual
activity, made him a person of some importance. He was a
Liberal, in the English sense, and had he not resolutely separated
himself from the new régime on the religious question he would
have approved of the policy of the golden mean represented by
Louis Philippe. He wished to see the Church free from the
control of the state, and passionately attacked the monopoly
of public instruction by which the monarchy fortified its position.
This latter scheme first brought Montalembert into notice, as
he was formally charged with unlicensed teaching. He claimed
the right of trial by his peers, and made a notable defence, of
course with a deliberate intention of protest (1832). On the
other hand, he thought that the Church should not obstinately
oppose new ideas. He had eagerly entered into the plans of
his friends, Lamennais and Lacordaire, and collaborated with
them in the newspaper l’Avenir. The Ultramontane party was
roused by their boldness, and Montalembert and his two friends
then left for Rome. This famous pilgrimage proved useless to
mitigate the measures which the Roman curia took against the
l’Avenir. Its doctrines were condemned in two encyclicals
(Mirari vos, 1832, and Singulari vobis, 1834), and Montalembert
submitted. He still clung to his early Liberalism, and in 1848
saw without regret the end of a government towards which he
had always been hostile. He had a seat in the Chamber of
Deputies till 1857, but to his great regret was then obliged to
retire into private life. He was still, however, recognized as one
of the most formidable opponents of the empire. Meanwhile his
Liberal ideas had made him some irreconcilable enemies among
the Ultramontanes. Louis Veuillot, in his paper, L’Univers,
fought desperately against him. Montalembert answered by
reviving a review which had for some time ceased publication,
the Correspondant (1855), in which he set himself to fight both
against the fanatical party of Pius IX. and the Syllabus, and the
more or less free-thinking Liberals of the Revue des deux mondes.
He took great interest in the débuts of the Liberal empire, whilst
trying to parry the blow which the Ultramontanes were preparing
to deal to Liberal ideas by proclaiming in the Vatican council
the dogma of papal infallibility. But once again he would not
allow himself to be seduced from obedience to the pope; he now
severed his connexion with Père Hyacinthe (Loison) as he had
with Lamennais, and made the submission expected of him to
the council. It was his last fall. Broken down by the trial
of these continued fights against people of his own religion, he
died prematurely on the 13th of March 1870.
In addition to being an eloquent orator, Montalembert wrote a style at once picturesque, fiery and polished. He was an ardent student of the middle ages, but his medieval enthusiasm was strongly tinctured with religious sentiments. His first historical work, La Vie de Ste Elisabeth de Hongrie (1836), is not so much a history as a religious manifesto, which did much to restore the position of hagiography. It met with great success; but Montalembert was not elected a member of the Académie Française till later, after the fall of the July monarchy (Jan. 9, 1851). From this time he gave much of his attention to a great work on monachism in the West. He was at first attracted by the figure of St Bernard, and devoted one volume to him; this was, however, afterwards withdrawn on the advice of his friend Dupanloup, and the whole edition was destroyed. He then enlarged his original plan and published the first volumes of his Moines d’occident (1860), an eloquent work which was received with much admiration in those circles where language was more appreciated than learning. The work, which was unfinished at the time of the author’s death, was completed later from some long fragments found among his papers (vols. vi. and vii., 1877).
Montalembert married Mlle de Mérode, sister of one of Pius IX.’s ministers. His daughter married the vicomte de Meaux, a Roman Catholic statesman and distinguished writer.
Bibliography.—Mrs Oliphant, Memoir of Count de Montalembert, peer of France, deputy for the department of Doubs (Edinburgh, 1872). Mrs Oliphant, who has also translated into English Moines d’Occident, has given a most charming account of the youth of Montalembert, and especially the first years passed at Stanmore. See also the vicomte de Meaux, Montalembert (1897); see also L. R. P. Lecanuet, Montalembert, d’après son journal et sa correspondance (3 vols., 1895–1902) a work filled with important documents; and Léon Lefébure, Portraits de croyants au XIXᵐ siècle: Montalembert, Auguste Cochin, François Rio (who was Montalembert’s professor of philosophy); A. Guthlin (1905); and Lettres d’Alphonse d’Herbelot à Charles de Montalembert et à Léon Cornudet (1828–1830).
MONTALEMBERT, MARC RENÉ, Marquis de (1714–1800),
French military engineer and writer, was born at Angoulême on the 16th of July 1714, and entered the French Army in 1732. He fought in the War of the Polish Succession on the Rhine (1733–34), and in the War of the Austrian Succession made the campaigns of 1742 in Bohemia and Italy. In the years preceding the Seven Years’ War, Montalembert (who had become an associate member of the Académie des Sciences in 1747) devoted his energies to the art of fortification, to which Vauban’s Traité de l’attaque attracted him, and founded the arsenal at Ruelle, near his birthplace. On the outbreak of war he became French commissioner with the allied army of Sweden, with the rank of brigadier-general. He constructed the field fortifications of Anklam and Stralsund. In 1761 he was promoted maréchal de camp, and began the works on which his fame rests. Montalembert’s fortress has been aptly described by an English author as an “immense battery.” The intricacies of trace by which Vauban and Cormontaigne sought to minimize the power of the attack, are abandoned in favour of a simple tenaille plan so arranged that the defenders can bring an overwhelming fire to bear on the works of the besieger. Montalembert, who himself drew his idea from the practice of Swedish and Prussian engineers, furnished the German constructors of the early 19th century with the means of designing entrenched camps suitable to modern conditions of warfare. The “polygonal” method of fortification is the direct outcome of Montalembert’s systems. In his own country the caste-spirit of the engineer corps was roused to defend Vauban, and though Montalembert was allowed to construct some successful works at Aix and Oléron, he was forbidden to publish his method, and given but little opportunity for actual building. After fifteen years of secrecy he published in Paris (1776–1778) the first edition of La Fortification perpendiculaire. At the time of the Revolution he surrendered a pension, which had been granted him for the loss of an eye, although he was deeply in debt, particularly on account of his Ruelle foundry, on which 6000 livres were due to him from the state, which he never received. Persuaded by his wife, he joined in the emigration of the noblesse, and for a time lived in England. All his possessions were thereupon sequestrated by the republican government. He very soon returned, divorced his wife, and married again. He obtained the annulment of the sequestration. Carnot often called him into consultation on military affairs, and, in 1792, promoted him general of division. Proposed as a member of the Institut in 1797, he withdrew his candidature in favour of General Bonaparte. He died at Paris on the 29th of March 1800. His wife, Marie Josephine de Comarieu, was the
