"There is no more luck at our age, marshal," was all he said to Villeroi, on his arrival at Versailles.

"He was nothing more than an old wrinkled balloon, out of which all the gas that inflated it has gone," says St.

Simon: "he went off to Paris and to Villeroi, having lost all the varnish that made him glitter, and having nothing more to show but the under-stratum." The king summoned Vendome, to place him at the head of the army of Flanders, "in hopes of restoring to it the spirit of vigor and audacity natural to the French nation," as he himself says.

For two years past, amidst a great deal of ill-success, Vendome had managed to keep in check Victor-Amadeo and Prince Eugene, in spite of the embarrassment caused him by his brother the grand prior, the Duke of La Feuillade, Chamillard's son-in-law, and the orders which reached him directly from the king; he had gained during his two campaigns the name of taker of towns, and had just beaten the Austrians in the battle of Cascinato.

Prince Eugene had, however, crossed the Adige and the Po when Vendome left Italy.
"Everybody here is ready to take off his hat when Marlborough's name is mentioned," he wrote to Chamillard, on arriving in Flanders.