said Turenne:  “those old regiments of the emperor’s did mighty well.”  He subsequently entered the Palatinate, quartering his troops upon it, whilst the superintendents sent by Louvois were burning and plundering the country, crushed as it was under war-contributions.  The king and Louvois were disquieted by the movement of the enemy’s troops, and wanted to get Turenne back into Lothringen.  “An army like that of the enemy,” wrote the marshal to Louvois, on the 13th of Septem ber, “and at the season it is now, cannot have any idea but that of driving the king’s army from Alsace, having neither provisions nor means of getting into Lorraine, unless I be driven from the country.”  On the 20th of September, the burgesses of the free city of Strasburg delivered up the bridge over the Rhine to the Imperialists who were in the heart of Elsass.  The victory of Ensheim, the fights of Mulhausen and Turckheim, sufficed to drive them back; but it was only on the 22d of January, 1675, that Turenne was at last enabled to leave Elsass reconquered.  “There is no longer in France an enemy that is not a prisoner,” he wrote to the king, whose thanks embarrassed him.  “Everybody has remarked that M. de Turenne is a little more bashful than he was wont to be,” said Pellisson.

The coalition was proceeding slowly; the Prince of Orange was ill; the king made himself master of the citadel of Liege and some small places.  Limburg surrendered to the Prince of Conde, without the allies having been able to relieve it; Turenne was posted with the Rhine in his rear, keeping Montecuculli in his front; he was preparing to hem him in, and hurl him back upon Black Mountain.  His army was thirty thousand strong.  “I never saw so many fine fellows,” Turenne would say, “nor better intentioned.”  Spite of his modest reserve, he felt sure of victory.  “This time I have them,” he kept saying; “they cannot escape me.”

On the 27th of June, 1675, in the morning, Turenne ordered an attack on the village of Salzbach.  The young Count of St. Hilaire found him at the head of his infantry, seated at the foot of a tree, into which he had ordered an old soldier to climb, in order to have a better view of the enemy’s manoeuvres.  The Count of Roye sent to conjure him to reconnoitre in person the German column that was advancing.  “I shall remain where I am,” said Turenne, “unless something important occur;” and he sent off re-enforcements to M. de Roye; the latter repeated his entreaties; the marshal asked for his horse, and, at a hard gallop, reached the right of the army, along a hollow, in order to be under cover from two small pieces of cannon, which kept up an incessant fire.  “I don’t at all want to be killed to-day,” he kept saying.  He perceived M. do St. Hilaire, the father, coming to meet him, and asked him what column it was on account of which he had been sent for.  “My father was pointing it out to him, writes young St. Hilaire, “when, unhappily, the two little pieces fired: