On the other side were the Moderns ("Modernes"), who opened fire first with Perrault's "Le siècle de Louis le Grand" ("The Century of Louis the Great," 1687), in which he supported the merits of the authors of the century of Louis XIV and expressed the Moderns' stance in a nutshell:::"La docte Antiquité dans toute sa durée::"A l'égal de nos jours ne fut point éclairée.