Ezéchiel du Mas, Comte de Mélac
The southwestern part of Germany—the Palatinate, the Margraviate of Baden, and the Duchy of Württemberg—especially suffered from Mélac's execution of Louvois's order, "brûlez le Palatinat!"
[3] In contrast to the general German viewpoint, Saint-Simon in his famous Mémoires describes Mélac as an excellent soldier and a very pleasant person to his friends and to his superior officers, albeit he admits that the general was sometimes of too fiery a temperament, to the occasional detriment of his military success, and easily nettled by those whom he considered disrespectful towards him, and even that he had a "mania for making himself terrifying to the enemy.
1688: In September, the Rhine army moved into the territory of the Palatinate without formal declaration of war, which began the Nine Years' War, pitting France against a wide coalition of European states, including Britain (where the Protestant William, Prince of Orange, had overthrown his father-in-law and uncle, the Catholic James II, to become King William III), Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire.
The French also moved into the territory east of the Rhine and conquered the cities of Heilbronn, Heidelberg and Mannheim (10 November) and the stronghold Philippsburg; Pforzheim had been occupied since 10 October.
East of the Rhine, Bretten, Maulbronn, Pforzheim, Baden-Baden, and numerous other towns and villages met the same fate, but it is not known in detail how heavily Mélac was directly involved in all these cases.
In Pforzheim's case, Mélac was reportedly the commanding officer and thus directly responsible for the shelling of the town on 10 August and the devastating fire a few days later.
On one occasion, he reportedly exposed six naked prostitutes on the market square of Landau for two days, for which he received a reprimand from the royal court.
Grim stories were told of French soldiers being shot if they protested Mélac's atrocities; one popular tale recounted that the general took to riding out each morning with a pack of hounds, setting them on anyone whom he would encounter.
1702: As part of the next major conflict France was involved in, the War of the Spanish Succession, the stronghold underwent the Siege of Landau by an army under the command of Louis William, Margrave of Baden.
In order to keep his soldiers' morale up, he had gold and silver items from his personal possessions melted down and struck into coins as salary for his men.
1703: Living a secluded life in a house in the Rue des Tournelles in today's 4th Arrondissement in Paris with a few servants, at the end of August he wrote his last will.
