that it would be to his Majesty's service to give precise orders,
at such a distance, to the most incapable man in France." Turenne had
not lost the habit of command; Louvois, who had for a long while been
under his orders, bowed to the will of the king, who required apparent
accord between the marshal and the minister, but he never forgave Turenne
for his cool and proud independence. The Prince of Conde more than once
turned to advantage this latent antagonism. After the death of Louvois
and of Turenne, after the retirement of Conde, when the central power
fell into the hands of Chamillard or of Voysin, the pretence of directing
war from the king's closet at Versailles produced the most fatal effects.
"If M. de Chamillard thinks that I know nothing about war," wrote Villars
to Madame de Maintenon, "he will oblige me by finding somebody else in
the kingdom who is better acquainted with it." "If your Majesty," he
said again, "orders me to shut myself up in Bavaria, and if you want to
see your army lost, I will get myself killed at the first opportunity
rather than live to see such a mishap." The king's orders, transmitted
through a docile minister, ignorant of war, had a great deal to do with
the military disasters of Louis XIV.'s later years.

Meanwhile order reigned in the army, and supplies were regular. Louvois
received the nickname of great Victualler (_Vivrier_). The wounded were
tended in hospitals devoted to their use. "When a soldier is once down,
he never gets up again," had but lately been the saying. "Had I been at
my mother's, in her own house, I could not have been better treated,"
wrote M. D'Alligny on the contrary, when he came out of one of the
hospitals created by Louvois. He conceived the grand idea of the Hotel
des Invalides. "It were very reasonable," says the preamble of the
king's edict which founded the establishment, "that they who have freely
exposed their lives and lavished their blood for the defence and
maintenance of this monarchy, who have so materially contributed to the
winning of the battles we have gained over our enemies, and who have
often reduced them to asking peace of us, should enjoy the repose they
have secured for our other subjects, and should pass the remainder of
their days in tranquillity." Up to his death Louvois insisted upon
managing the Hotel des Invalides himself.

Never had the officers of the army been under such strict and minute
supervision; promotion w