nd no bread for the army. The common
soldiers were reduced to herbs and roots for all sustenance. Under
these circumstances it was found impossible to persevere in trying to
save Mons. Nothing but subsistence could be thought of.

The Court had now become so accustomed to defeats that a battle lost as
was Malplaquet seemed half a victory. Boufflers sent a courier to the
King with an account of the event, and spoke so favourably of Villars,
that all the blame of the defeat fell upon himself. Villars was
everywhere pitied and applauded, although he had lost an important
battle: when it was in his power to beat the enemies in detail, and
render them unable to undertake the siege of Mons, or any other siege.
If Boufflers was indignant at this, he was still more indignant at what
happened afterwards. In the first dispatch he sent to the King he
promised to send another as soon as possible giving full details, with
propositions as to how the vacancies which had occurred in the army might
be filled up. On the very evening he sent off his second dispatch, he
received intelligence that the King had already taken his dispositions
with respect to these vacancies, without having consulted him upon a
single point. This was the first reward Boufflers received for the
services he had just rendered, and that, too, from a King who had said in
public that without Boufflers all was lost, and that assuredly it was God
who had inspired him with the idea of going to the army. From that time
Boufflers fell into a disgrace from which he never recovered. He had the
courage to appear as usual at the Court; but a worm was gnawing him
within and destroyed him. Oftentimes he opened his heart to me without
rashness, and without passing the strict limits of his virtue; but the
poniard was in his heart, and neither time nor reflection could dull its
edge. He did nothing but languish afterwards, yet without being confined
to his bed or to his chamber, but did not live more than two years.
Villars, on the contrary, was in greater favour than ever. He arrived at
Court triumphant. The King made him occupy an apartment at Versailles,
so that his wound might be well attended to.

What a contrast! What a difference between the services, the merit, the
condition, the virtue, the situation of these two men! What
inexhaustible funds of reflection.

CHAPTER L

I have described in its proper place the profound fall of M. le Duc
d'Orleans a