h this belief had led them to weaken by
drawing troops to their wings, that had been chosen by Marlborough from
the first for the chief point of attack. By making an artificial road
across the morass which covered it, he was at last enabled to throw his
eight thousand horsemen on the mass of the French cavalry, which
occupied this position; and two desperate charges which the Duke headed
in person decided the day. The French centre was flung back on the
Danube and forced to surrender. Their left fell back in confusion on
Hochstaedt: while their right, cooped up in Blindheim and cut off from
retreat, became prisoners of war. Of the defeated army only twenty
thousand men escaped. Twelve thousand were slain, fourteen thousand were
captured. Vienna was saved, Germany finally freed from the French, and
Marlborough, who followed the wreck of the French host in its flight to
Elsass, soon made himself master of the Lower Moselle.

[Sidenote: Occasional conformity.]

But the loss of France could not be measured by men or fortresses. A
hundred victories since Rocroi had taught the world to regard the armies
of Lewis as all but invincible, when Blenheim and the surrender of the
flower of the French soldiery broke the spell. From that moment the
terror of victory passed to the side of the allies, and "Malbrook"
became a name of fear to every child in France. In England itself the
victory of Blenheim aided to bring about a great change in the political
aspect of affairs. The Tories were already pressing hard on the defeated
Whigs. If they were willing to support the war abroad, they were
resolved to use the accession of a Stuart to the throne to secure their
own power at home. They resolved therefore to make a fresh attempt to
create a permanent Tory majority in the Commons by excluding
Nonconformists from the municipal corporations, which returned the bulk
of the borough members, and whose political tendencies were for the
most part Whig. The test of receiving the sacrament according to the
ritual of the Church of England, effective as it was against Catholics,
was useless against Protestant Dissenters. While adhering to their
separate congregations, in which they were now protected by the
Toleration Act, they "qualified for office," as it was called, by the
"occasional conformity" of receiving the sacrament at church once in the
year. It was against "occasional conformity" that the Tories introduced
a test which by excluding the