"People were dying of want to the sound of the Te Deum," says Voltaire in the Siecle de Louis XIV.; everywhere there was weariness equal to the suffering.

Madame de Maintenon and some of her friends at that time, sincerely devoted to the public good, rather Christians than warriors, Fenelon, the Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, were laboring to bring, the king over to pacific views; he saw generals as well as ministers falling one after another; Marshal Luxembourg, exhausted by the fatigues of war and the pleasures of the court, died on the 4th of January, 1695, at sixty-seven years of age.

An able general, a worthy pupil of the great Conde, a courtier of much wits and no shame, he was more corrupt than his age, and his private life was injurious to his fame; he died, however, as people did die in his time, turning to God at the last day.

"I haven't lived like M.de Luxembourg," said Bourdaloue, "but I should like to die like him." History has forgotten Marshal Luxembourg's death and remembered his life.
Louis XIV.

had lost Conde and Turenne, Luxembourg, Colbert, Louvois, and Seignelay; with the exception of Vauban, he had exhausted the first rank; Catinat alone remained in the second; the king was about to be reduced to the third: sad fruits of a long reign, of an incessant and devouring activity, which had speedily used up men and was beginning to tire out fortune; grievous result of mistakes long hidden by glory, but glaring out at last before the eyes most blinded by prejudice! "The whole of France is no longer anything but one vast hospital," wrote Fenelon to the king under the veil of the anonymous.