perfect discipline of William’s veterans, many of whom had been in a score of pitched battles. Lauzun and his French were sent toward the Irish left, accompanied by Sarsfield, with a weak squadron of horse. But Douglas had formed his troops in such strong array that Lauzun, in spite of the direct orders of King James, declined to attack him, or receive his attack. Instead, he manœuvred so as to place a morass between his troops and the enemy, and then began falling back on the pass of Duleek, fearing to be outflanked and cut off by young Schomberg’s powerful cavalry. Sarsfield, according to his custom, charged the hostile horse boldly, but his men were too few, and he was reluctantly compelled to follow the retrograde movement of the French. In this operation he lost one cannon, which got stuck in the mud of a bog that intervened between the river and Donore. At the latter point he rejoined the king. James seemed to think only of his line of retreat. Had he thought of his line of advance, everything might still have been rectified. His army remained unshaken, except by his own wretched fears. The dread of being made a prisoner was his bane. He had sent most of the baggage and half the cannon toward Dublin at the first news of the reverse at Slane—a remarkable way by which to raise the spirits of an army already sadly conscious of the incompetency of its royal commander, and its own inferiority to the Williamite host in everything but ardent zeal and knightly courage. William, on learning of the success of his right wing, immediately ordered Marshal Schomberg, at the head of the formidable Dutch guards, two regiments of Huguenots, two of Inniskilleners, Sir John Hammer’s regiment, and several others on that front, including the Danes, to ford the Boyne in hot haste. They plunged in bravely, opposite to Oldbridge, and so dense were their columns, according to Chaplain Story, that the water rose perceptibly. Still it could not have risen much above the knees of the shortest soldier, for the historian, Haverty—a scrupulous writer—says, in his admirable work, that the water did not reach to the drums of the bands that accompanied the attack. The unseasoned Irish dragoons and infantry, armed with old fusils and half-pikes, received the enemy with a hasty and ill-directed fire, which did little damage. William’s troops replied with overpowering volleys, and his batteries threw balls into the defences. It would seem that little was done at this point to rally the defenders, for they soon broke and abandoned the hedges, but formed again in the lanes of Oldbridge and the fields in its vicinity. The shout of triumph from Schomberg’s men was answered by a roar of anger that seemed to come from the battle-clouds above the river. There was a sound as of many waters, a terrific crashing of hoofs, a flashing of sabres, dying groans—Richard Hamilton, at the head of the superb Irish cavalry, was among the Williamite regiments, dealing