Cavalier, naturally sensible and humane, sometimes sank into despondency.

He would fling himself on his knees, crying, Lord, turn aside the king from following the counsels of the wicked!" and then he would set off again upon a new expedition.

The struggle had been going on for two years, and Languedoc was a scene of fire and bloodshed.

Marshal Montrevel had gained great advantages when the king ordered Villars to put an end to the revolt.
"I made up my mind," writes Villars, in his Memoires, "to try everything, to employ all sorts of ways except that of ruining one of the finest provinces in the kingdom, and that, if I could bring back the offenders without punishing them, I should preserve the best soldiers there are in the kingdom.

They are, said I to myself, Frenchmen, very brave and very strong, three qualities to be considered." "I shall always," he adds, "have two ears for two sides." "We have to do here with a very extraordinary people," wrote the marshal to Chamillard, soon after his arrival; "it is a people unlike anything I ever knew--all alive, turbulent, hasty, susceptible of light as well as deep impressions, tenacious in its opinions.