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Le dieu eut besoin de toute sa puissance.

Le dieu eut besoin de toute sa puissance.
The god needed all his power.
From Lesson 175:Irregular verbs in the literary past tense (il fut, il vit)·French

Questions & Answers about Le dieu eut besoin de toute sa puissance.

What tense is eut in this sentence?
It is the passé simple (literary past tense) of the verb avoir (to have). Here it is part of the expression avoir besoin de (to need). You will mostly encounter the passé simple in books, stories, and historical texts rather than in spoken French.
Why does the story use eut besoin here instead of the imperfect tense avait besoin?
The imperfect (avait besoin) would describe an ongoing state or background information. By using the passé simple (eut besoin), the writer shows this as a sudden, specific event in the storyline: at that exact moment, the god suddenly required his power to act.
If the god (le dieu) is masculine, why does the sentence say sa puissance instead of son puissance?
In French, possessive adjectives always match the gender of the noun being owned, not the owner. Because puissance (power) is a feminine noun, you must use the feminine word sa, regardless of who possesses it.
Why does the word for all (toute) have an e at the end here?
The word tout acts as an adjective here and must agree with the noun it describes. Since puissance is feminine and singular, tout changes its form to the feminine singular toute.

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