and never could change till one side or other had definitely
triumphed. France won. There were glorious English
victories at Cressy and Agincourt. Edward III and Henry V
were two of the greatest soldiers of any age. But, though
the English often won the battles, the French won the
war. The French had many more men, they fought near
their own homes, and, most important of all, the war was
waged chiefly on land. The English had fewer men, they
fought far away from their homes, and their ships could
not help them much in the middle of the land, except by
bringing over soldiers and food to the nearest coast.
The end of it all was that the English armies were worn
out; and the French armies, always able to raise more
and more fresh men, drove them, step by step, out of the
land completely.

The second long series of wars took place chiefly in the
eighteenth century. These wars have never been given one
general name; but they should be called the Second Hundred
Years' War, because that is what they really were. They
were very different from the wars that made up the first
Hundred Years' War, because this time the fight was for
oversea dominions, not for land in Europe. Of course
navies had a good deal to do with the first Hundred Years'
War and armies with the second. But the navies were even
more important in the second than the armies in the first.
The Second Hundred Years' War, the one in which Wolfe
did such a mighty deed, began with the fall of the Stuart
kings of England in 1688 and went on till the battle of
Waterloo in 1815. But the beginning and end that meant