was carried. Halifax moved in the Lords that an inquiry should be made into the alleged danger of the Church. After a long de bate it was voted by a majority of sixty-one peers against thirty, that the Church was not in danger. The Lords and Commons then subsequently agreed in the following resolution: "Resolved by the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons in parliament assembled, that the Church of England, as by law established, which was rescued from the extremest danger by King William III., of glorious memory, is now, by God's blessing, under the happy reign of her majesty, in a most safe and flourishing condition, and whosoever goes about to suggest and insinuate, that the Church is in danger under her majesty's administration, is an enemy to the queen, the Church, and the kingdom." The queen then issued a proclamation, at the instance of Parliament, declaring that we will proceed with the utmost severity the law should allow of, against the authors or spreaders of the said seditious and scandalous reports"-namely, that the Church is in danger. To us, at the distance of a century and a half, the whole affair seems ludierous and beneath the gravity of parliamentary proceedings. In three years more, we shall see the nation stirred to a temporary frenzy by the same spirit of ecclesiastical controversy, displaying itself in absurdity still more outrageous, as it now must appear. But, after all, we cannot regard these things with the eyes of our forefathers, and must judge the actors in them with that charity in which they appear to have been themselves deficient. Godolphin and Marlborough are dining in perfect cordiality with Halifax, Cowper, and Sunderland, at Harley's house; and Harley drinks" to love and friendship and everlasting union, and wishes he had more Tokay to drink it in." Marlborough is setting his face against jobbery, with exemplary fortitude. Lord Albemarle wants a commission for some lower-school boy of Eton or Westminster. The queen, replies Marlborough, "has lately shown so much aversion to anything of that kind, upon notice taken in Parliament, of children's being commissioned in the troops, that she has given me repeated orders to the contrary." ↑ Disinterested is he also in the management of one of the corruptions of that day, which still flourishes in its original luxuriance,— the sale of commissions. Mrs. Selwin is unreasonable enough to be "dissatisfied with the offer I have made Mr. Selwin of a company in the Guards, upon his laving down eight hundred pounds. .. I could wish Mr. Selwin might have it for nothing, but there is a necessity of applying this sum at least in charity to the Lord Cowper's "Diary "-Hardwicke Papers.. ↑ Dispatches, vol. ii. p. 437. MARLBOROUGH'S CAMPAIGN IN THE NETHERLANDS. 171 Such are the occu widows, and to satisfy other pretensions." * pations of the great captain, before he gets out of England to his accustomed battle-ground. He goes at last, and is at the Hague on the 27th of April. His notion of a campaign in 1706 was to shift his ground; to go to the relief of the Duke of Savoy, who was expected to be besieged; and to co-operate with prince Eugene in freeing Italy from the French armies. This plan had the countenance of the English ministry. But the elector of Hanover would not consent that his troops should assist in Marlborough's project; and the Danes and Hessians also refused their co-operation. Meanwhile the French on the Upper Rhine had obtained some successes; and thus the Dutch again became alarmed for their own safety. Marlborough consented to remain in the command of the English and Dutch armies, provided that his power was unfettered. To this the States consented; and the troops began to march from the Hague on the 7th of May. They were to be joined by various garrisons, and to encamp near Maestricht. On the 15th Marlborough wrote to the duchess to inform her that, in all likelihood he should make the whole campaign in the Netherlands-not such a campaign as would please him. "Let me say for myself that there is more credit in doing what is good for the public, than in preferring our private satisfaction and interest; for my being here in a condition of doing nothing that shall make a noise, has made me able to send ten thousand men to Italy, and to leave nineteen thousand more on the Rhine." The great genera! scarcely saw the opportunity of "making a noise," that he would be able to insure in little more than a week after he had reluctantly turned away from the plan that would best promote his "private satisfaction and interest." On the 20th of May, he wrote to Harley to express his hope that he might bring the enemy to a battle. for the French had drawn all their garrisons together, had passed the Dyle, and were posted at Tirlemont. In a letter of the next day to M. Hop, at the Hague, he says that this movement of the enemy "has quite broken the measures we were projecting at Maestricht. . . . We design to advance to gain the head of the Gheet, to come to the enemy if they keep their ground. For my part, I think nothing could be more happy for the Allies than a battle since, I have good reason to hope, with the blessing of God we may have a complete victory." There is nothing more remarkable than the unswerving confidence of Marlborough in his own happy fortune. Here were no particular circumstance to in↑ Coxe, vol. ii. p. 335. * Dispatches, vol. ii. p. 441. spire him with this confidence. He had no superiority of numbers: for his English, Dutch, and Danes amounted to sixty thousand men, whilst Villeroy's army of French and Bavarians amounted to sixty-two thousand. He had no superiority in the distribution of his forces in his advance to battle; and in the same way as at Blenheim, he found the enemy in possession of the ground which he had hoped to take up. The famous novelist, who has described the men and manners of these times with a rare fidelity, has truly said, "The great duke, always spoke of his victories with an extraordinary modesty, and as if it was not so much his own admirable genius and courage which achieved these amazing successes, but as if he was a special and fatal instrument in the hands of Providence, that willed irresistibly the enemy's overthrow. . . And our army got to believe so, and the enemy learnt to think so too." * It was Whitsunday, the 23rd of May, when Marlborough begun his march, at three o'clock in the morning, to gain the open space between the Mehaigne and the Great Gheet. † That position was found to be occupied by the enemy. The Allies, in eight columns, passed the once formidable lines which had been demolished in the preceding year; and having cleared the village of Mierdorp, formed in order of battle in the plain of Jandrinouil. The enemy was posted in two lines on eminences above the marshes, stretching from the Little Gheet to the Mehaigne, having the village of Ramilies in the centre. It was a formidable position. From Mierdorp, near which the Allies crossed the lines, to Ramilies, was a distance of nearly three miles. The whole plain, about three miles in breadth, is bounded on the north by the Little Gheet, on the south by the Mehaigne. The plain narrows towards the west, being bounded by the rising ground through which the Little Gheet flows from its sources near Ramilies. ‡ Villeroy waited for the attack in his camp, on the rising ground of Mont St. André, a plain with gentle undulations and interspersed with coppices. Behind this rising ground is the Great Gheet. The Allies formed their order of battle in the plain, between the village of Boniffe, on the Mehaigne, and the village of Foulaz, on the Little Gheet,having two lines, the infantry in the centre, the cavalry on the wings, with twenty squadrons of Danes to support the left of the infantry. In this order Marlborough advanced to the western extremity of the plain. Ramilies, an enclosed village, was defended by * Thackeray, "Esmond," chap. xii. † Letter to Eugene, "Dispatches," vol. ii. p. 525. There is an excellent plan in the Atlas to Coxe; and another, not very dissimilar, in Tindal BATTLE OF RAMILIES. 173 twenty battalions of French. Between Ramilies and the marshes of the Mehaigne, were posted nearly the whole of the French cavalry. Their centre and left, composed of infantry, extended from the village of Autre-église to the village of Offuy, and thence behind Ramilies. Marlborough determined to make a demonstration of attack upon the left of the French, at Autre-église and Offuy. Villeroy immediately drew his troops from the centre to support his left. Marlborough had the advantage of moving in a smaller space than the enemy, whose position formed an arc on the hills, while the allies could traverse the chord of the plain. Directly Villeroy had weakened his centre, Marlborough ordered the second line of the troops that were advancing to Autre-église, to defile to the left by a hollow way that concealed them. The first line of his right wing ascended the rising ground at Autre-église, and opened their fire. But the main brunt of the battle was on his left, where the French were attacked at Ramilies and at Tavieres, a village on the Mehaigne. The assault on Tavieres by the Dutch infantry was successful. But the French cavalry then came into conflict with the Dutch cavalry under Auverquerque, and repelled them in great disorder. This was the crisis of the battle. The vast body of French and Bavarian horse had every chance of taking in the rear the Allied infantry who were attacking Ramilies. Marlborough saw the danger. He put himself at the head of seventeen squadrons, and charged the French cavalry. This was indeed a fight of horse to horse, to be decided by main strength more than strategy. Marlborough, who was recognised, was surrounded and nearly made prisoner. He cut his way through; his charger fell; his equerry had his head shot off by a cannon ball as he held the stirrup for his general to mount another horse. But now a reserve of cavalry that Marlborough had sent for, came up; and an irresistible charge determined the battle on the left. The Allies mounted the heights above Ramilies, and the shout of victory announced that the position had been gained which insured an ulti mate success. The conflict was not over in and around the village of Ramilies. The fight amongst the cottages was long and doubtful. But the ever-watchful general ordered up a reserve of infantry, and the Allied horse, descending from their heights, their united force completed the triumph of the left and centre. Three hours had been occupied in these terrible encounters. But the changes of fortune had been so various-the confusion of onset and retreat so great-the disorder attendant upon troops of all arms being mixed in one common effort so extreme, that Marlborough was compelled to form his forces again upon the ground they had won. Villeroy now endeavoured to take up a new line, but was impeded by his own baggage. Before he could get his battalions formed, Marlborough ordered a general advance to the sources of the Little Gheet; but before the morasses were crossed the French began to fly, and one headlong panic and slaughter closed that fearful evening. Onward went the pursued and the pursuers towards Louvain. Marlborough did not halt till he had reached Mildert, thirteen miles from the battle-field. The elector of Bavaria and Villeroy reached Louvain at two o'clock on the morning of the 24th; held a council in the market-place by torchlight; and determined to abandon their fortified towns, and save the remnant of their force by a hurried retreat. The French and Bavarians lost seven thousand men, killed and wounded, and six thousand prisoners. The Allies lost nearly four thousand men. The artillery, baggage, and eighty standards, were the spoil of the victors. On the 3rd of June Marlborough wrote to St. John, "it is very astonishing that the enemy should give up a whole country, with so many strong places, without the least resistance." He had entered Louvain without meeting any obstacle. Malines, Alost, and other places had submitted. The Estates of Brabant assembled at Brussels had acknowledged the authority of king Charles III., and they sent out their commands to other fortified towns to make a like submission.. Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and Oudenarde were surrendered without a shot being fired. In his exultation Marlborough exclaimed in his letters home, "now is the time, certainly, to reduce France to reason." St. Simon says, "with the exception of Namur, Mons, and a very few other places, all the Spanish Low Countries were lost." The king, he tells us, felt this misfortune to the quick, however tranquilly he appeared to sustain it. But there was work still to do, before that campaign was ended. Ostend was besieged by a powerful land force and by nine ships of the line. The garrison of five thousand men capitulated on the 7th. of July. Menin, one of the greatest fortresses of Vauban, was carried by assault, with immense loss, on the 22nd of August. Dendermonde surrendered on the 5th of September. It might long have held out, had there not been seven weeks of excessive drought, which enabled the besiegers to approach, without being held back by the inundation which the besiegers could command in ordinary seasons. Ath was the last fortress to fall on the 4th of October. Marlborough returned home to receive the thanks of Parliament, and to take part in the great event of the Session of 1706-7,-the |