members were added to the five hundred and thirteen members of the English House of Commons, while sixteen Scotch representative peers were added to the one hundred and eight members of the English House of Lords.

In Scotland the opposition to the Act was bitter and almost universal. The terrors of the Presbyterians were allayed by an Act of Security which became a part of the Treaty of Union, and which required every sovereign on his accession to take an oath to support the Presbyterian Church; but the enthusiastic Whig patriots and the fanatical Jacobites of Scotland would not be satisfied with any securities. The Scotch Jacobites sought the aid of French troops and plotted for a Stuart restoration. The Scotch national party threatened to secede from the Presbyterian Assembly which voted for the Union, and to establish a rival Parliament.

But in the end the good sense of the Scotch people, and the loyaity of the trading classes of Scotland to the cause of the Protestant succession, prevailed over all jealousies and opposition; and the Act of Union was adopted by the Scottish Parliament during the same year, 1707, when the Treaty of Union became a Parliamentary Act, which was signed by Queen Anne, who gave her assent in these noble words: "I desire and expect from my subjects of both nations that henceforth they act with all possible respect and kindness to one another, that so it may appear to all the world they have hearts disposed to become one people."

Time has answered all of Queen Anne's hopes. The two nations hitherto so hostile have remained one ever since the Treaty of Union in 1707 brought them together. The Union was soon acquiesced in as the best policy for both countries, and so it has indeed proved. England was thus freed from a constant danger of treason and war, and the Union has been of the greatest advantage to Scotland.

Says John Richard Green, in his Short History of English People, concerning Queen

Anne's expressed hopes: "Time has more than answered these hopes. The two nations whom the Union brought together have ever since remained one. England gained in the removal of a constant danger of treason and war. To Scotland the Union opened up new avenues of wealth which the energy of its people turned to wonderful account. The farms of Lothian have become models of agricultural skill. A fishing town on the Clyde has grown into the rich and populous Glasgow. Peace and culture have changed the wild clansmen of the Highlands into herdsmen and farmers. Nor was the change followed by any loss of national spirit. The world has hardly seen a mightier and more rapid development of national energy than that of Scotland after the Union. All that passed away was the jealousy which had parted since the days of Edward the First two peoples whom a common blood and common speech proclaimed to be one. The Union between Scotland and England has been real and stable simply because it was the legislative acknowledg ment and enforcement of a national fact."

The Duke of Marlborough had been rewarded with the royal manor of Woodstock, where the palace of Blenheim was afterward erected. It was the wise policy of the duke to govern England by holding the balance of power between the rival political parties. His victory at Ramillies made him strong enough to force Queen Anne to admit Lord Sunderland, the most ultra leader of the Whigs, to office, notwithstanding her hatred of the Whig party. The Tories were daily becoming more opposed to the war, and the Duke of Marlborough was obliged to rely upon the Whigs for support. They made him pay a dear price for their aid. They were the only party that supported the war to which the Duke of Marlborough was pledged; and he was powerless to oppose the measures of the Whigs, as he could not command the support of the Tories.

Not only was the Tory party opposed to the Duke of Marlborough, but Queen Anne's Tory principles caused her to lose faith in the great duke. She bitterly resented the

appointment of Lord Sunderland to office, which the Duke of Marlborough had wrung from her by threatening to resign his command. The Whigs were resolved to drive the moderate Tories from office; and, as the Duke of Marlborough was powerless to oppose them, he was obliged to comply with their demands, against his own judgment. This compliance increased the queen's hatred towards the duke, and the haughty temper of the duke's wife won for her the dislike of her former royal friend. The Whigs were now supreme in England.

The constitutional Union of England and Scotland in 1707 excited some disturbances in Scotland, and the French king took advantage thereof by sending a fleet and five thousand men to escort the Pretender to the Frith of Forth. The French monarch's design was frustrated by the English fleet under Admiral Byng.

Though France was successful for the moment her situation was yearly becoming more critical. The kingdom was exhausted by the great expense of the struggle. Every means of raising funds had been resorted to -"loans at ruinous rates of interest, the creation of new and frivolous offices, assignments on the revenue of future years, vexatious taxes, immense issues of paper money." Fresh embarrassments followed each new expedient, and the French people were discontented, so that murmurs were heard on every side. Chamillart, Minister of Finance, was succeeded by Desmartes, Colbert's nephew; but the new Minister was unable to afford relief to the suffering nation. Louis XIV. had well-nigh ruined the industry of France to gratify his religious bigotry, and was now reaping the fruits of his unstatesmanlike policy.

Great expectations had been formed in England, which the results of the campaign of 1707 so miserably disappointed. In consequence Lord Godolphin and the Duke of Marlborough lost much of their popularity, and they were opposed even by members of the Cabinet. Though they Though they persuaded Queen Anne to dismiss Secretary Harley and Mr. St. John, they perceived

that their influence with Her Majesty and their power in Parliament had been considerably diminished, A. D. 1708.

Under these circumstances the Duke of Marlborough felt that his future interests depended upon a vigorous campaign, especially as the French under the Duke of Vendôme had by treachery gained possession of Ghent and Bruges, thus regaining some of their lost ground in the Spanish Netherlands. The Duke of Marlborough, at the head of the English and Dutch army in the Spanish Netherlands, was reinforced by the German imperial army under Prince Eugene; and the two great generals increased their military renown by their brilliant victory over the French army under the Dukes of Vendôme and Burgundy at Oudenarde, on the Scheldt, July 11, 1708. Soon afterward the allies took Lille from Marshal Boufflers after a long and difficult siege, October 22, 1708, thus opening the way to Paris. They also rescued Brussels from the Elector of Bavaria, and recovered Ghent and Bruges, thus regaining all of Spanish Flanders and occupying part of French Flanders.

In the Mediterranean during 1708 the English fleet under Admiral Sir John Leake received the submission of the island of Sardinia to the Archduke Charles of Austria, and established a British garrison at Port Mahon. The islands of Majorca and Iviça had already declared for the Archduke Charles.

These brilliant successes of the allies in the campaign of 1708 raised their confidence to the highest pitch; and Lord Godolphin and the Duke of Marlborough found the English Parliament willing to grant additional supplies for the war, while the Dutch agreed to augment their troops, and the Ger man imperialists promised to show more activity.

King Louis XIV. was disheartened by defeat, his treasury was exhausted, and his counsels were distracted. In addition to her military reverses, France was beginning to suffer the horrors of famine, caused by the severity of the winter of 1708-'9, which

froze the vineyards, orchards and the grain already sown. Whole families of poor were frozen to death in their miserable hovels. Even the Rhone was frozen over, and the Mediterranean seemed almost transformed into a polar sea. people produced a universal outcry for peace throughout the kingdom, and the popular discontent manifested itself in riots and other violent demonstrations.

The misery of the French

Humiliated and chagrined, Louis XIV. was obliged to heed the outcry of his subjects for peace; but the allies, doubting his sincerity, scornfully rejected his overtures, and demanded the most humiliating terms as the price of peace-terms which he could not accept without sacrificing his honor and dignity. They demanded that he should himself aid them in. driving his grandson Philip V. from the throne of Spain. He refused to entertain such a proposition, and appealed to the patriotism of his subjects to sustain him in another effort.

The haughty and insolent demands of the allies aroused the pride of the French people, who, even in their distress, revolted at such indignity, and resolved to support their king in continuing the war rather than submit to such humiliation. The French king and many of his nobles sent their plate to the mint, and by a series of vigorous measures funds were raised for the expenses of the war during the ensuing year, while the sum of thirty-five millions was obtained from the Spanish West Indies.

The great loss of the allies in the battle of Malplaquet caused the Tory enemies of the Duke of Marlborough to raise the cry of a deluge of blood" in order to make him unpopular in his own country. England was flooded with pamphlets and other publications against the great duke, who was abused, ridiculed, accused of prolonging the war for his own gratification and profit; and even the courage of this greatest of England's generals was questioned. The efforts of his Tory enemies succeeded, and the English people were induced to consider the greatest Englishman of the time as his country's worst enemy. His brilliant ser

vices in so nobly sustaining the glory of England abroad were simply regarded by the English populace as evidences of a criminal ambition.

In 1709 the able Marshal Villars was assigned to the command of the French army in the Spanish Netherlauds. The allied English, Dutch and German imperial armies under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene captured Tournay, and defeated the French army of eighty thousand men under Marshals Villars and Boufflers in the bloody battle of Malplaquet, September 11, 1709, in which Marshal Villars was himself wounded and borne from the field, and his army fled with the loss of ten thousand men, while the victorious allies lost twentythousand. The vanquished French army retreated in good order to Valenciennes, and Marshal Villars wrote to his king that another such defeat would secure France against the efforts of the Second Grand Alliance. Mons surrendered to the allies immediately after the battle, and was occupied by them.

In 1710 Louis XIV. again solicited peace, offering to make great concessions to the allies. He even offered to recognize the Archduke Charles as King of Spain, to furnish no more assistance to his grandson Philip V., and even to supply the allies with money to prosecute the war against him. But the allied powers demanded that Louis himself should send an army into Spain to assist in driving out his grandson. This insulting demand Louis rejected with scorn, saying: "If I must continue the war, I should rather fight against my enemies than against my own grandson." The French people, who had clamored for peace, shared the indignation of their monarch, and were resolved not to submit to any such degrading conditions.

Louis XIV. was much encouraged by the successes of his arms in Spain during the year 1710. The campaign opened with the victories of the Austrians under Count Stahremberg in the battles of Almenara and Saragossa; but afterward the entire English corps under Stanhope was captured by the