The empress had not waited for this serious reverse to claim from France the promised aid.  By this time it was understood how insufficient would be a body of twenty-four thousand men for a distant and hazardous war.  Recently called to the council by King Louis XV., Marshal Belle-Isle, still full of daring in spite of his age, loudly declared that, “since war had come, it must be made on a large scale if it were to be made to any purpose, and speedily.”  Some weeks later, preparations were commenced for sending an army of a hundred thousand men to the Lower Rhine.  The king undertook, besides, to pay four thousand Bavarians and six thousand Wurtemburgers, who were to serve in the Austrian army.  Marshal d’Estrees, grandson of Louvois, was placed at the head of the army already formed.  He was not one of the favorite’s particular friends. a Marshal d’Estrees,” she wrote to Count Clermont, “is one of my acquaintances in society; I have never been in a position to make him an intimate friend, but were he as much so as M. de Soubise, I should not take upon myself to procure his appointment, for fear of having to reproach myself with the results.”  Madame de Pompadour did not continue to be always so reserved, and M. de Soubise was destined before long to have his turn.  M. de Belle-Isle had insisted strongly on the choice of Marshal d’Estrees; he was called “the Temporizer,” and was equally brave and prudent.  “I am accustomed,” said the king, “to hear from him all he thinks.”  The army was already on the march.

Whilst hostilities were thus beginning throughout Europe, whilst negotiations were still going on with Vienna touching the second treaty of Versailles, King Louis XV., as he was descending the staircase of the marble court at Versailles on the 5th of January, 1757, received a stab in the side from a knife.  Withdrawing full of blood the hand he had clapped to his wound, the king exclaimed, “There is the man who wounded me, with his hat-on; arrest him, but let no harm be done him!” The guards were already upon the murderer and were torturing him pending the legal question.  The king had been carried away, slightly wounded by a deep puncture from a penknife.  In the soul of Louis XV. apprehension had succeeded to the first instinctive and kingly impulse of courage; he feared the weapon might be poisoned, and hastily sent for a confessor.  The crowd of courtiers was already thronging to the dauphin’s.  To him the king had at once given up the direction of affairs.

[Illustration:  Assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens——­221]