y master."
Eugene was old and worn out; he preserved his ability, but his ardor was
gone. Marshal Noailles and D'Asfeldt did not agree; France did not reap
her advantages. The campaign of 1735 hung fire in Germany.

It was not more splendid in Italy, where the outset of the war had been
brilliant. Presumptuous as ever, in spite of his eighty-two years,
Villars had started for Italy, saying to Cardinal Fleury, "The king may
dispose of Italy, I am going to conquer it for him." And, indeed, within
three months, nearly the whole of Milaness was reduced. Cremona and
Pizzighitone had surrendered; but already King Charles Emmanuel was
relaxing his efforts with the prudent selfishness customary with his
house. The Sardinian contingents did not arrive; the Austrians had
seized a passage over the Po; Villars, however, was preparing to force
it, when a large body of the enemy came down upon him. The King of
Sardinia was urged to retire. "That is not the way to get out of this,"
cried the marshal, and, sword in hand, he charged at the head of the
body-guard; Charles Emmanuel followed his example; the Austrians were
driven in. "Sir," said Villars to the king, who was complimenting him,
"these are the last sparks of my life; thus, at departing, I take my
leave of it."

Death, in fact, had already seized his prey; the aged marshal had not
time to return to France to yield up his last breath there; he was
expiring at Turin, when he heard of Marshal Berwick's death before
Philipsburg. "That fellow always was lucky," said he. On the 17th of
June, 1734, Villars died, in his turn, by a strange coincidence in the
very room in which he had been born when his father was French ambassador
at the court of the Duke of Savoy.

Some days later Marshals Broglie and Coigny defeated the Austrians before
Parma; the general-in-chief, M. de Mercy, had been killed on the 19th of
September; the Prince of Wurtemberg, in his turn, succumbed at the battle
of Guastalla, and yet these successes on the part of the French produced
no serious result. The Spaniards had become masters of the kingdom of
Naples and of nearly all Sicily; the Austrians had fallen back on the
Tyrol, keeping a garrison at Mantua only. The Duke of Noailles, then at
the head of the army, was preparing for the siege of the place, in order
to achieve that deliverance of Italy which was as early as then the dream
of France, but the King of Sardinia and the Queen of Spain were a