HOW VILLARS GOT OUT OF A SCBAPE. 141

themselves with having elevated him from nothing, so rapidly
and so enormously; they began to shun him, to put him aside,
to make him perceive what they thought, and to let others
perceive it also.

Villars in his turn was frightened. 3f He saw the prospect of
losing what he had gained, and of sinking into hopeless dis-
grace. With the effrontery that was natural to him, he
returned therefore to his usual flatteries, artifices, and deceits;
laughed at all dangers and inconveniences, as having resources-
in himself against everything! The coarseness of this variation
was as plain as possible; but the difficulty of choosing another
general was equally plain, and Villars thus got out of the
quagmire. He set forth for the frontier, therefore, in his coach,
and travelling easy stages, on account of his wound, arrived in
due time at the army.

Neither Prince Eugene nor the Duke of Marlborough wished
for peace; their object was, the first, from personal vengeance
against the King, and a desire to obtain a still greater reputa-
tion ; the second, to get rich, for ambition was the prominent
passion of one, and avarice of the other—their object was, I say,
to enter France, and profiting by the extreme weakness and
straitened state of our troops and of our places, to push their
conquests as far as possible.

As for the King, stung by his continual losses, he wished
passionately for nothing so much as a victory, which should
disturb the plans of the enemies, and deliver him from the
necessity of continuing the sad and shameful negotiations for
peace he had set on foot at Gertruydemberg. But the enemies
were well posted, and Villars had imprudently lost a good
opportunity of engaging them. All the army had noticed this
fault; he had been warned in time by several general officers,
and by the Marechal de Montesquiou, but he would not believe
them. He did not dare to attack the enemies, now, after having
left them leisure to make all their dispositions. The army cried
aloud against so capital a fault. Villars answered with his
usual effrontery. He had quarrelled with his second in com-
mand, the Marshal de Montesquiou, and now knew not what
to do.