The defeats that the Allied armies of William III of Orange had suffered in those previous wars could regularly be blamed on the flight of the cavalry.

[4] After 1700, however, led by a new generation of cavalry commanders such as Reinhard Vincent Hompesch and Grovestins, Dutch horsemen no longer allowed themselves to be intimidated by the French reputation.

[5] Grovestins who had witnessed the campaigns during the Nine Years' War thought that the disasters that had befallen the Dutch cavalry were mainly due to its emphasis on the use of carbines.

[7][8] This victory, which showed that Grovestins' ideas were based on solid foundations, caused other generals to adopt this way of fighting was the start of the many successes that would follow for the Allied cavalry in this war.

[10][11] On 10 June 1712, at the head of a brigade of 1800 hussars and dragoons, he set out from the Allied camp at Tournai through Champagne and the dioceses of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and pillaged and burned those regions for 11 days.

After returning from his illustrious foray, he was appointed governor of Bouchain, but with four weak battalions he was unable to defend this fortress for long and became a prisoner of war of the French in Champagne, the region he had so recently terrorised.

[11] The esteem in which the French held him meant that during his captivity he was allowed to travel freely through the Netherlands and France on the promise that he would return.

[13] When some years later he ate with Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, the chief minister of Louis XV, as a Dutch delegate in Paris in 1727, the conversation fell on the domestic situation of the provinces of France.