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." In his secret heart, and beneath the veil of his majestic observance of the proprieties, the king thought that his business, as well as the agreeableness of his life, would probably gain from being no longer subject to the tempers and the roughnesses of Louvois.

The Grand Monarque considered that he had trained (_instruit_) his minister, but he felt that the pupil had got away from him.