navy nearly equalled the combined English and Dutch, the gravest
complications existed in Ireland. which passed almost wholly under the
control of the natives and the French. Nevertheless, the Irish Sea was
rather a danger to the English--a weak point in their communications
--than an advantage to the French. The latter did not venture their
ships-of-the-line in its narrow waters, and expeditions intending to
land were directed upon the ocean ports in the south and west. At the
supreme moment the great French fleet was sent upon the south coast of
England, where it decisively defeated the allies, and at the same the
twenty-five frigates were sent to St. George's Channel, against the
English communications. In the midst of a hostile people, the English
army in Ireland was seriously imperiled, but was saved by the battle
of the Boyne and the flight of James II. This movement against the
enemy's communications was strictly strategic, and would be just as
dangerous to England now as in 1690.

Spain, in the same century afforded an impressive lesson of the
weakness caused by such separation when the parts are not knit
together by a strong sea power. She then still retained, as remnants
of her past greatness, the Netherlands (now Belgium), Sicily, and
other Italian possessions, not to speak of her vast colonies in the
New World. Yet so low had the Spanish sea power fallen, that a
well-informed and sober-minded Hollander of the day could claim that
"in Spain all the coast is navigated by a few Dutch ships and since
the peace of 1648 their ships and seamen are so few that they have
publicly begun to hire our ships to sail to the Indies, whereas they
were formerly careful to exclude all foreigners from there... It is
manifest," he goes on, "that the West Indies. being as the stomach to
Spain (for from it nearly all the revenue is drawn), must be joined to
the Spanish head by a sea force; and that Naples and the Netherlands,