After this the king disliked and despised these troops, and hung them without ceremony, when taken in those acts of plunder and slaughter to which they were so much addicted.
So far from the flight of King James discouraging the army, it caused universal joy.

It was his constant vacillation, interference, and cowardly action which had paralysed his troops; and they felt that, now they were free to act without his interference, they would be able to cope with the invaders.
William at once offered favourable terms, if Ireland would submit to his authority; but these were declined, partly owing to the powerful influence of France, partly to the fear that the terms would not be observed, partly to the apprehension of all the gentry, that the lands which they had but just recovered from the hands of Cromwell's settlers would be again taken from them.
At the battle of the Boyne, Walter Davenant, with his father's troop, had taken part in all the desperate charges upon the enemy.

During the long hours the battle had lasted, the cavalry had been incessantly engaged.
Time after time they had charged down upon the Dutch squares, and no sooner had the ranks been reformed, after recoiling from the line of fixed bayonets, than they were called upon to charge in another direction.
Walter's heart beat high as they dashed into the midst of the French infantry, or shattered and drove before them the Danish horse; but there was little time to think, and, looking back upon the day when all was over, it seemed to him a chaos of excitement and confusion, of which he could hardly recall even the chief incidents.
As the troops halted for the night, they were in no way dispirited at the result of the battle, as the retreat had been begun before a blow was struck.

They knew that it was neither intended nor hoped that the ground would be successfully held; and every man felt a pride in the thought that some eighteen thousand newly-raised Irish levies, of whom but a small portion of the infantry were armed with muskets, had sustained, throughout a long summer's day, the attacks of more than double their number of veteran troops, supported by fifty pieces of artillery.
The loss of the Irish horse had been comparatively small.

Charging a square, in the days when the bayonet was fixed in the muzzle of the gun, was not the desperate undertaking that it now is, when from the hedge of steel issues a rolling and continuous fire.