It was magnificent, but it was not war. The great congress resolved to oppose Louis with two hundred and twenty thousand men, but while they were talking, feasting, and junketing, the Grand Monarque was up and doing. Mons, the most important of the fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands, was besieged and fell. The glamour of the congress was at once destroyed and the Allies were disquieted. Louis returned in triumph to Versailles, and William went back in chagrin to England for a brief visit. The other princes and potentates broke up in dudgeon and went their several ways, among them the Brunswick dukes, who returned to Hanover and Wolfenbüttel respectively. On the return of the Brunswick princes, intrigues and discontents ran high at the courts of Hanover and Celle. The fall of Mons and the continued uncertainty about the coveted electorate made the Duke of Hanover turn his back upon William of Orange and lend a willing ear once more to the overtures of the French King. An envoy of Louis was at Hanover, and was received with great favour by Ernest Augustus and by Count and Countess Platen, to whom he made large presents. The Duke himself does not seem to have been above the suspicion of bribery, for, writes Colt, “to show some of us he doth not want money, he bought a jewel of forty thousand crowns from a Jew of Amsterdam, or else it was a present, for by that channel the French money comes”.[50] ----- Footnote 50: Colt’s _Despatches_, Locknam, June 10, 1691. ----- The English envoy was hard put to it to counteract these influences. The Duchess Sophia was on his side, but she could do little. Prince George Louis was with him too, but he could do less. On the other hand, the Princess Sophie Dorothea favoured the French party. “The eldest prince,” writes Colt, “is a very reserved man and has good parts, and not in the least French in his inclinations, which gave that party some discontent; they make all y^e court imaginable to y^e Princess, and I fear not without success, for she has no great fondness for the Prince.”[51] The Princess was probably influenced by her mother, who was French at heart, as well as by birth, and, with the Duke of Hanover, they united in dissuading the Duke of Celle from sending troops to Flanders. Colt had spoken of the Duchess of Celle as likely to support France. ----- Footnote 51: _Ibid._, Hanover. -----