It was at Ramillies that the Scots Greys galloped straight through a difficult morass, with an infantry battle raging round them. On they went, till they gained the approach to the heights beyond. Then they dashed up the steep acclivity to the heights, and down the other side, where they thundered like an avalanche on the enemy's Household Brigade. The impact of that sudden crash seemed to shake the battlefield. Says one who was there: "The crash of our meeting rose above the noise of battle; it was like sudden thunder." The French fought with the utmost desperation, but they were matched this time, not with nondescript and poorly trained Continental troops, but with picked British, and were literally swept away before the Scots Greys. Many battalions of infantry under their protection were cut to pieces by the Scots Greys and the Royal Irish Dragoons, the predecessors of the 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers. Still the Greys pursued their devastating career through Autreglise, and, at a point beyond, overtook the French Régiment du Roi, and secured its surrender. All that night, like flying demons, they pursued the retreating enemy, and what they did is traditionally summed up in the fact that they returned with no less than sixteen standards--truly a noble achievement! Again, at Malplaquet, the Scots Greys and the Royal Irish Dragoons came up against their old enemies the French Household Brigade. In three victorious charges they sustained the honour of their old victories over them, routing them utterly. Fate seems specially to have designed the Scots Greys and the Royal Irish to combat the French Household Brigade in days gone by, for, on many occasions when they have met, the pride of the latter has fallen before the valour of the former. Not only at Malplaquet, but also at Dettingen, the Greys, having cut their way through the French Cuirassiers, launched themselves irresistibly upon the French Household Cavalry. On this occasion, they swept them from the banks of the river, and wrested from them their crowning glory--their white standard of damask, embroidered with gold and silver, bearing in its centre a thunderbolt above their motto "Sensere Gigantes." So to-day it may be said that the giants who fell three times before the Scots Greys are now in the company of the Brobdignags. Some other battles in which the Greys multiplied their glories are as follow:--Drouet, Oudenarde, Bethune, St. Venant, Aire, Bouchain, Sheriffmuir, and Fontenoy.