The Irish Wars - A Military History of Ireland From the Norse Invasions to 1798 #251572

In the case of Ireland the fact of the country's being an island was one of those considerations calculated to offset the matter of its size._ The country could not he suddenly marched across and overwhelmed by an invader in greatly superior force. Its insular character, as we shall see later, gave choice of several lines of attack, but most of these lines were only secondary.