text:  More fully versed in their national history than any other European people they remembered that in every war with France for a thousand years England had finished with victory; that she had never suffered any one decisive defeat in the war that where the forces of the two nations could come fairly into contact their troops had always been successful; and that from the moment when France ventured to contest the empire of the seas all the battles of England were triumphs until the enemy was swept from the ocean