After the most brilliant, the most continually and invariably triumphant of reigns, he began to see Fortune slipping away from him, and the grievous consequences of his errors successively overwhelming the state.

"God is punishing me; I have richly deserved it," he said to Marshal Villars, who was on the point of setting out for the battle of Denain.

The aged king, dispirited and beaten, could not set down to men his misfortunes and his reverses; the hand of God Himself was raised against his house.

Death was knocking double knocks all round him.

The grand-dauphin had for some days past been ill of small-pox.