I should count upon getting to Peronne or St.
Quentin, and there massing all the troops I had, making a last effort with you, and falling together or saving the kingdom; I will never consent to let the enemy approach my capital.

[_Memoires de Villars, t.ii.

p.

362.]" God was to spare Louis XIV.

that crowning disaster reserved for other times; in spite of all his defaults and the culpable errors of his life and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed by so many reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard for his own greatness which set him higher as a king than he would have been as a man.