En 1693, l'armée française comptait théoriquement 400 000 hommes mais Louis XIV devait faire face à une crise économique[78]. Les mauvaises récoltes en France et Italie du Nord et les hivers très rigoureux provoquèrent une terrible famine qui, à la fin 1694, avait coûté la vie à près de deux millions de personnes[79]. Malgré tout, afin d'offrir une paix à son avantage à la Grande Alliance, Louis XIV décide de reprendre l'offensive : le duc de Luxembourg attaquerait dans nouveau commandant impérial sur le Rhin, Louis-Guillaume de Bade-Bade, empêche les Français de progresser davantage.
By 1693 the French army had reached an official size of over 400,000 men (on paper), but Louis XIV was facing an economic crisis.[94] France and northern Italy witnessed severe harvest failures resulting in widespread famine which, by the end of 1694, had accounted for the deaths of an estimated two million people.[95] Nevertheless, as a prelude to offering generous peace terms before the Grand Alliance Louis XIV planned to go over to the offensive: Luxembourg would campaign in Flanders, Catinat in northern Italy, and in Germany, where Louis XIV had hoped for a war-winning advantage, Marshal de Lorge would attack Heidelberg. In the event, Heidelberg fell on 22 May before Luxembourg's army took to the field in the Netherlands, but the new Imperial commander on the Rhine, Prince Louis of Baden, provided a strong defence and prevented further French gains.ParaCrawl Corpus ParaCrawl Corpus