There were moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when his spirits sank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his constitutional irritability broke forth.

"I cannot," he wrote, "offer a suggestion without being met by a demand for a subsidy." [292] "I have refused point blank," he wrote on another occasion, when he had been importuned for money, "it is impossible that the States General and England can bear the charge of the army on the Rhine, of the army in Piedmont, and of the whole defence of Flanders, to say nothing of the immense cost of the naval war.

If our allies can do nothing for themselves, the sooner the alliance goes to pieces the better." [293] But, after every short fit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all the force of his mind, and put a strong curb on his temper.

Weak, mean, false, selfish, as too many of the confederates were, it was only by their help that he could accomplish what he had from his youth up considered as his mission.

If they abandoned him, France would be dominant without a rival in Europe.