The natural result was that while Somerset was contenting himself with border raids, instead of espousing the cause of the Castilians, Prance was acting. About the beginning of July a French fleet appeared off St. Andrews; at the end of the month the castle surrendered. English ships might have prevented this, but the Protector elected instead to prepare a great invasion. In September he was over the border, in command of a considerable army, supported by a large fleet. The Scots of all parties mustered in force and were lying between the advancing English and Edinburgh in a strong defensive position not far from the spot made memorable two hundred years later by the rout of Prestonpans. The English ships were in the Forth hard by. The Scots in essence repeated the blunder of Flodden before and of Dunbar later. A successful attack by Somerset, who had the smaller army, was almost impossible; they thought that he was delivered into their hand, and mistook a tactical movement for a retreat to the ships. Abandoning their position and racing to cut him off, their leading troops received and broke a charge of horse; but the mass of the English, who were greatly superior in cavalry and artillery, and whose advance had been concealed by the formation of the ground, were already at hand and fell upon them. The Scottish army was completely shattered; ten thousand dead or dying men were left on the field of Pinkie Cleugh. The English loss was small. [Sidenote: Effect of Pinkie] Somerset however merely did very much what he had done before when he sacked Edinburgh in the last reign, ravaging and retiring. Pillage and destruction were arguments which invariably stiffened Scottish defiance, and it was now absolutely certain that the Scots would not consent on any terms to the English marriage. Dictation from England by force of arms was the one method of minimising the internal warring of factions in the Northern Country. Had Somerset been prepared to follow up his campaign by an effective military occupation, his plans might have been dignified with the name of a policy. In practice, they amounted almost to a negation of policy. A month after the battle the only effective result for Scotland was a renewed and intensified bitterness of hatred to England, and a corresponding inclination to amity with France. The practical reply to the invasion was the proposal to France of a marriage between the Queen of Scots and the Dauphin. For the Protector himself however, the victory of Pinkie was a personal triumph. He returned to England in a halo of military glory and popularity, to receive new compliments and honours, and to assume the rôle of beneficent dictator with self-complacent confidence when Parliament met for the first time in the beginning of November. [Sidenote: The Progressive Reformers]