It was not Jeanne who drove the English from France. If she contributed to the deliverance of Orleans, she retarded the ultimate salvation of France by causing the opportunity of conquering Normandy to be lost through the coronation campaign. The misfortunes of the English after 1428 are easily explained. While in peaceful Guyenne they engaged in agriculture, in commerce, in navigation, and set the finances in good order, the country which they had rendered prosperous was strongly attached to them. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire it was very different; there they had never taken root; in numbers they were always too few, and they had never obtained any hold on the country. Shut up in fortresses and chateaux, they did not cultivate the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it. They left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after Crecy and after Poitiers. Then, after Verneuil, during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord, lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, were they likely to succeed better? In 1428, they were but a handful in France, and to maintain themselves there they depended on the help of the Duke of Burgundy, who henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm.