If His Majesty would march against the Prince of Orange, victory was almost certain.  Could any advantage which it was possible to obtain on the Rhine be set against the advantage of a victory gained in the heart of Brabant over the principal army and the principal captain of the coalition?  The Marshal reasoned; he implored; he went on his knees; but in vain; and he quitted the royal presence in the deepest dejection.  Lewis left the camp a week after he had joined it, and never afterwards made war in person.

The astonishment was great throughout his army.  All the awe which he inspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and looking sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in curses and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holding irreverent language round their watchfires.  His enemies rejoiced with vindictive and insulting joy.  Was it not strange, they asked, that this great prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then in a week have gone in the same state back again?  Was it necessary that all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and tirewomen, equerries and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks, confectioners and musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of led horses and sumpter mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry, should travel four hundred miles merely in order that the Most Christian King might look at his soldiers and then return?  The ignominious truth was too evident to be concealed.  He had gone to the Netherlands in the hope that he might again be able to snatch some military glory without any hazard to his person, and had hastened back rather than expose himself to the chances of a pitched field.443 This was not the first time that His Most Christian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence.  Seventeen years before he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to the same antagonist.  William, with the ardour of a very young commander, had most imprudently offered battle.  The opinion of the ablest generals was that, if Lewis had seized the opportunity, the war might have been ended in a day.  The French army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset.  The King had called his lieutenants round him and had collected their opinions.  Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had been dexterously conveyed had, blushing and stammering with shame, voted against fighting.  It was to no purpose that bold and honest men, who prized his honour more than his life, had proved to him that, on all principles of the military art, he ought to accept the challenge rashly given by the enemy.  His Majesty had gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not, consistently with his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of his blood, had turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters.444 Was it not frightful to think what rivers of the best blood of France, of Spain, of Germany and of England, had flowed, and were destined still to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar courage which was found in the meanest of the hundreds of thousands whom he had sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?