They took up a position, skilfully chosen, on the borders of the Lake of Morat, where they were attacked by Charles at the head of sixty thousand soldiers of all ranks.

The result was the total defeat of the latter, with the loss of ten thousand killed, whose bones, gathered into an immense heap, and bleaching in the winds, remained for above three centuries; a terrible monument of rashness and injustice on the one hand, and of patriotism and valor on the other.
Charles was now plunged into a state of profound melancholy; but he soon burst from this gloomy mood into one of renewed fierceness and fatal desperation.

Nine months after the battle of Morat he re-entered Lorraine, at the head of an army, not composed of his faithful militia of the Netherlands, but of those mercenaries in whom it was madness to place trust.

The reinforcements meant to be despatched to him by those provinces were kept back by the artifices of the count of Campo Basso, an Italian who commanded his cavalry, and who only gained his confidence basely to betray it.

Rene, duke of Lorraine, at the head of the confederate forces, offered battle to Charles under the walls of Nancy; and the night before the combat Campo Basso went over to the enemy with the troops under his command.