God was to spare Louis XIV. that crowning disaster reserved for other times; in spite of all his defaults and the culpable errors of his life and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed by so many reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard for his own greatness which set him higher as a king than he would have been as a man.  “He had too proud a soul to descend lower than his misfortunes had brought him,” says Montesquieu, “and he well knew that courage may right a crown and that infamy never does.”  On the 25th of May, the king secretly informed his plenipotentiaries as well as his generals that the English were proposing to him a suspension of hostilities; and he added, “It is no longer a time for flattering the pride of the Hollanders, but, whilst we treat with them in good faith, it must be with the dignity that becomes me.”  “A style different from that of the conferences at the Hague and Gertruydenberg,” is the remark made by M. de Torcy.  That which the king’s pride refused to the ill will of the Hollanders he granted to the good will of England.  The day of the commencement of the armistice Dunkerque was put as guarantee into the hands of the English, who recalled their native regiments from the army of Prince Eugene; the king complained that they left him the auxiliary troops; the English ministers proposed to prolong the truce, promising to treat separately with France if the allies refused assent to the peace.  The news received by Louis XIV. gave him assurance of better conditions than any one had dared to hope for.

Villars had not been able to prevent Prince Eugene from becoming master of Quesnoy on the 3d of July; the imperialists were already making preparations to invade France; in their army the causeway which connected Marchiennes with Landrecies was called the Paris road.  The marshal resolved to relieve Landrecies, and, having had bridges thrown over the Scheldt, he, on the 23d of July, 1712, crossed the river between Bouchain and Denain; the latter little place was defended by the Duke of Albemarle, son of General Monk, with seventeen battalions of auxiliary troops in the pay of the allies; Lieutenant General Albergotti, an experienced soldier, considered the undertaking perilous.  “Go and lie down for an hour or two, M. d’Albergotti,” said Villars; “to-morrow by three in the morning you shall know whether the enemy’s intrenchments are as strong as you suppose.”  Prince Eugene was coming up by forced marches to relieve Denain, by falling on the rearguard of the French army.  It was proposed to Villars to make fascines to fill up the fosses of Denain.  “Do you suppose,” said he, pointing to the enemy’s army in the distance, “that those gentry will give us the time?  Our fascines shall be the bodies of the first of our men who fall in the fosse.”