He now has all that M.de Colbert had, except the buildments." What mattered the inexperience of ministers?
The king thought that he alone sufficed for all.
God had left it to time to undeceive the all-powerful monarch; he alone held out amidst the ruins; after the fathers the sons were falling around him; Seignelay had followed Colbert to the tomb; Louvois was dead after Michael Le Tellier; Barbezieux died in his turn in 1701.

"This secretary of state had naturally good wits, lively and ready conception, and great mastery of details in which his father had trained him early," writes the Marquis of Argenson.

He had been spoiled in youth by everybody but his father.

He was obliged to put himself at the mercy of his officials, but he always kept up his position over them, for the son of M.de Louvois, their creator, so to speak, could not fail to inspire them with respect, veneration, and even attachment.

Louis XIV., who knew the defects of M.
de Barbezieux, complained to him, and sometimes rated him in private, but he left him his place, because he felt the importance of preserving in the administration of war the spirit and the principles of Louvois.
"Take him for all in all," says St.Simon, "he had the making of a great minister in him, but wonderfully dangerous; the best and most useful friend in the world so long as he was one, and the most terrible, the most inveterate, the most implacable and naturally ferocious enemy; he was a man who would not brook opposition in anything, and whose audacity was extreme." A worthy son of Louvois, as devoted to pleasure as he was zealous in business, he was carried off in five days, at the age of thirty-three.