The two armies were almost equal in numbers: twenty-five or thirty thousand were mustered on either side. "Although it is true that the soldiers seem determined to do their best and are exasperated against the rebels," wrote d'Avaux, who had just returned to France with Rosen, who was superceded by Lauzun, "yet that is not the only requisite for fighting a battle. The subaltern officers are bad; and, excepting a very few, there are none to take care of the soldiers, the arms and the discipline. More confidence is placed in the cavalry, the greater part of which is good enough." William had brought with him his veteran Dutch and German regiments; representatives of all the Protestant churches of Europe were there in arms against the enemies of their liberties. None were more impetuous than the Irish Protestants, burning to avenge their recent injuries, and the French Huguenots, who flocked from all quarters against the monarch whom Louis XIV. sustained. "I am sure," the Baron d'Avejon, lieutenant colonel in King William's service, had written to Geneva, "that you will not fail to have published in all the French churches of Switzerland the obligation which rests on all refugees to come and help us in this campaign, in which the glory of God, and, consequently, the reestablishment of his Church in our country are at stake." Vain hopes! which explain the zeal of the French Protestants against the Irish and King James. Two refugees--Marshal Schomberg, and M. de Caillemotte, younger brother of Ruvigny--led them at the battle of the Boyne, exclaiming: "Forward, my children, to glory! Forward! behold our persecutors!"