ench were drawn up in a wide
curve with morasses covering their front. After a feint on their left,
Marlborough flung himself on their right wing at Ramillies, crushed it
in a brilliant charge that he led in person, and swept along their whole
line till it broke in a rout which only ended beneath the walls of
Louvain. In an hour and a half the French had lost fifteen thousand men,
their baggage, and their guns; and the line of the Scheldt, Brussels,
Antwerp and Bruges became the prize of the victors. It only needed four
successful sieges which followed the battle of Ramillies to complete the
deliverance of Flanders.

[Sidenote: The Union with Scotland.]

The year which witnessed the victory of Ramillies remains yet more
memorable as the year which witnessed the final Union of England with
Scotland. As the undoing of the earlier union had been the first work of
the Government of the Restoration, its revival was one of the first aims
of the Government which followed the Revolution. But the project was
long held in check by religious and commercial jealousies. Scotland
refused to bear any part of the English debt. England would not yield
any share in her monopoly of trade with the colonies. The English
Churchmen longed for a restoration of Episcopacy north of the Border,
while the Scotch Presbyterians would not hear even of the legal
toleration of Episcopalians. In 1703 however an Act of Settlement which
passed through the Scotch Parliament at last brought home to English
statesmen the dangers of further delay. In dealing with this measure the
Scotch Whigs, who cared only for the independence of their country,
joined hand in hand with the Scotch Jacobites, who looked only to the
interests of the Pretender. The Jacobites excluded from the Act the
name of the Princess Sophia; the Whigs introduced a provision that no
sovereign of England should be recognized as sovereign of Scotland save
upon security given to the religion, freedom, and trade of the Scottish
people. The danger arising from such a measure was undoubtedly great,
for it pointed to a recognition of the Pretender in Scotland on the
Queen's death, and such a recognition meant war between Scotland and
England. The need of a union became at once apparent to every statesman,
but it was only after three years' delay that the wisdom and resolution
of Lord Somers brought the question to an issue. The Scotch proposals of
a federative rather than a legislative union were