The Elector of Bavaria, an able prince and a good soldier, had roused Germany to avenge his wrongs; France had just been placed under the ban of the empire; and the grand alliance was forming. All the German princes joined it; the United Provinces, England, and Spain combined for the restoration of the treaties of Westphalia and of the Pyrenees. Europe had mistaken hopes of forcing Louis XIV. to give up all his conquests. Twenty years of wars and reverses were not to suffice for that. Fortune, however, was tiring of being favorable to France; Marshals Duras and Humieres were unable to hamper the movements of the Duke of Lorraine, Charles V., and of the Elector of Bavaria; the French garrisons of Mayence and of Bonn were obliged to capitulate after an heroic defence their munitions failed. The king recalled Marshal Luxembourg to the head of his armies. The able courtier had managed to get reconciled with Louvois. “You know, sir,” he wrote to him on the 9th of May, 1690, “with what pleasure I shall seek after such things as will possibly find favor with the king and give you satisfaction. I am too well aware how far my small authority extends to suppose that I can withdraw any man from any place without having written to you previously. It is with some repugnance that I resolve to put before you what comes into my head, knowing well that all that is good can come only from you, and looking upon anything I conceive as merely simple ideas produced by the indolence in which we are living here.”
The wary indolence and the observations of Luxembourg were not long in giving place to activity. The marshal crossed the Sambre on the 29th of June, entered Charleroi and Namur, and on the 2d of July attacked the Prince of Waldeck near the rivulet of Fleurus. A considerable body of troops had made a forced march of seven leagues during the night, and came up to take the enemy in the rear; it was a complete success, but devoid of result, like the victory of Stafarde, gained by Catinat over the Duke of Savoy, Victor-Amadeo, who had openly joined the coalition. The triumphant naval battle delivered by Tourville to the English and Dutch fleets off Beachy Head was a great humiliation for the maritime powers. “I cannot express to you,” wrote William III. to the grand pensionary Heinsius, holding in his absence the government of the United Provinces, “how distressed I am at the disasters of the fleet; I am so much the more deeply affected as I have been informed that my ships did not properly support those of the Estates, and left them in the lurch.”
William had said, when he left Holland, “The republic must lead off the dance.” The moment had come when England was going to take her part in it.
In the month of January, 1691, William III. arrived in Holland. “I am languishing for that moment,” he wrote six months before to Heinsius. All the allies had sent their ambassadors thither. “It is no longer the time for deliberation, but for action,” said the King of England to the congress “the King of France has made himself master of all the fortresses which bordered on his kingdom; if he be not opposed, he will take all the rest. The interest of each is bound up in the general interest of all. It is with the sword that we must wrest from his grasp the liberties of Europe, which he aims at stifling, or we must submit forever to the yoke of servitude. As for me, I will spare for that purpose neither my influence, nor my forces, nor my person, and in the spring I will come, at the head of my troops, to conquer or die with my allies.”
The spring had not yet come, and already (March 15) Mons was invested by the French army. The secret had been carefully kept. On the 21st, the king arrived in person with the dauphin; William of Orange collected his troops in all haste, but he did not come up in time: Mons capitulated on the 8th of April; five days later, Nice, besieged by Catinat, surrendered like Mons; Louis XIV. returned to Versailles, according to his custom after a brilliant stroke. Louvois was pushing on the war furiously; the naturally fierce temper of the minister was soured by excess of work and by his decline in the king’s favor; he felt his position towards the king shaken by the influence of Madame de Maintenon; venting his wrath on the enemy, he was giving orders everywhere for conflagration and bombardment, when on the 17th of July, 1691, after working with the king, Louvois complained of pain; Louis XIV. sent him to his rooms; on reaching his chamber he fell down fainting; the people ran to fetch his third son, M. de Barbezieux; Madame do Louvois was not at Versailles, and his two elder sons were in the field; he arrived too late; his father was dead.
“So he is dead, this great minister, this man of such importance, whose egotism (le moi), as M. Nicole says, was so extensive, who was the centre of so many things! What business, what designs, what projects, what secrets, what interests to unfold, what wars begun, what intrigues, what beautiful moves-in-check to make and to superintend! Ah! my God, grant me a little while; I would fain give check to the Duke of Savoy and mate to the Prince of Orange! No, no, thou shalt not have one, one single moment!” Thus wrote Madame do Sevigne to her daughter Madame de Grignan. Louis XIV., in whose service Louvois had spent his life, was less troubled at his death. “Tell the King of England that I have lost a good minister,” was the answer he sent to the complimentary condolence of King James, “but that his affairs and mine will go on none the worse.”