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But it took a hundred years to get the English out of France, and much
longer still to bring all parts of the British Isles under a single
king.
In the fourteenth century the population of France, including all the
French possessions of the English Crown, was four times the population
of England. One would suppose that the French could easily have driven
the English out of every part of France and have carried the war into
England, as the Romans carried their war into Carthage. But English
sea-power made all the difference. Sea-power not only kept Frenchmen
out of England but it helped Englishmen to stay in France and win many
a battle there as well. Most of the time the English fleet held the
command of the sea along the French as well as along the English coast.
So the English armies enjoyed the immense advantage of sea-transport
over land-transport, whenever men, arms, horses, stores, food, and
whatever else their armies needed could be moved by water, while the
French were moving their own supplies by land with more than ten times
as much trouble and delay.


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