urgh was the first
commander who understood all about the weather gage and how to get it.
Even the clever Eustace was taken in, for he said, "I know these clever
villains want to plunder Calais. But the people there are ready for
them." So he held his course to the Forelands, meaning to round into
the mouth of Thames and make for London.

Then Hubert bore down. His fleet was the smaller; but as he had the
weather gage he succeeded in smashing up the French rear before the
rest could help it. As each English vessel ranged alongside it threw
grappling irons into the enemy, who were thus held fast. The English
archers hailed a storm of well aimed arrows on the French decks, which
were densely crowded by the soldiers Eustace was taking over to conquer
England. Then the English boarded, blinding the nearest French with
lime, cutting their rigging to make their vessels helpless, and
defeating the crews with great slaughter. Eustace, having lost the
weather gage, with which he had started out that morning, could only
bring his fleet into action bit by bit. Hubert's whole fleet fought
together and won a perfect victory.

More than a century later the unhappy Hundred Years War (1336-1431)
broke out. All the countries of Western Europe took a hand in it at
one time or another. Scotland, which was a sort of sub-kingdom under
the King of England, sided with France because she wished to be
independent of England, while the smaller countries on the eastern
frontier of France sided with England because they were afraid of
France. But the two great opponents were always France and England.
The Kings of England had come from Normandy and other parts of what is
now France and what then were fiefs of the Crown of France, as Scotland
was a fief of the Crown of England. They therefore took as much
interest in what they held in France as in their own out-and-out
Kingdom of England. Moreover, they not only wanted to keep what they
had in France but to make it as independent of the French King as the
Scotch King wanted to make Scotland independent of them.

In the end the best thing happened; for it was best to have both
kingdoms completed in the way laid out by Nature: France, a great
land-power, with a race of soldiers, having all that is France now; and
England, the great sea-power, with a race of sailors, becoming one of
the countries that now make up the United Kingdom of the British Isles.
But it took a hundred years to g