Never was the hostility of the English public more roused against him. The same hateful cabal which had already thrice threatened to bring about his downfall again rose against him. They invited the fashionable world in London to their _fêtes_, specially organised on the days when the performances of his oratorios were to have taken place, with the object of robbing him of his audience. Bolingbroke and Smollett both speak of the plots of certain ladies to ruin Handel. Horace Walpole says that it was the fashion to go to the Italian Opera when Handel directed his oratorio concerts. Handel, whose force of energy and genius had weakened since his first failure of 1735, was involved afresh in bankruptcy at the beginning of 1745. His griefs and troubles, and the prodigious expenditure of force which he made, seemed again on the point of turning his brain. He fell into extreme bodily prostration and lowness of spirit, similar to that of 1737, and this lasted for the space of eight months, from March to October, 1745.[252] By a miracle he was able to rise out of this abyss, and by unforeseen events, where music was his only aid, he became more popular than he ever was before. The Pretender, Charles Edward, landed in Scotland; the country rose up. An army of Highlanders marched on London. The city was in consternation. A great national movement arose in England, Handel associated himself with it. On November 14, 1745, he brought to light at Drury Lane his _Song made for the Gentlemen Volunteers of the City of London_,[253] and he wrote two oratorios, which were, so to speak, immense national hymns: the _Occasional Oratorio_,[254] where Handel called the English to rise up against invasion, and _Judas Maccabæus_[255] (July 9 to August 11, 1746), the Hymn of Victory, written after the rout of the rebels at Culloden Moor, and for the _fête_ on the return of the conqueror, the ferocious Duke of Cumberland, to whom the poem was dedicated. These two patriotic oratorios, where Handel's heart beat with that of England, and of which the second, _Judas Maccabæus_, has retained even to our own day its great popularity, thanks to its broad style and the spirit which animates it,[256] brought more fortune to Handel than all the rest of his works together. After thirty-five years of continuous struggle, plot and counterplot, he had at last obtained a decisive victory. He became by the force of events _the national musician of England_. * * * * *