For his part, King Louis XIV of France did little to disabuse the combatants of the feeling that they had dropped off the map of Christendom. The Battle of the Boyne had been the battle for Ireland, or so everyone in Christendom believed, according to a letter Bob had got from Eliza. They believed it not because it had any particular military weight but because there had been a King on each side of a river and one had crossed over it and the other had turned his backside to it and run away, and not stopped running until he’d reached France.