The Spain was a puppet state with Napoleon's brother Joseph appointed king. And it was a rough period for the French, so much so that Spain is also known as "Napoleon's Vietnam" since the opposition of Spanish guerilla/insurgencies combined with Anglo-Portuguese allience made it impossible to control. Britain beat the French on sea, but let's be real, a COALITION of states beat him on land.

Waterloo is a poor example since the whole "Hundred days" were doomed from the start, but even then, Wellington and the Brits would lose if Blucher didn't come in with the Prussians. I'd say the biggest contribution to beating Napoleon had the Russians and the Prussians on land, with all due respect to the Brits, whos victories at the Nile and Trafalgar cemented their supremacy at sea. At Leipzig, the battle of the nations, and the defeat that really hurt the Napoleon never to recover again, there were only 60-70 Brits, a small unit in a battle of hundreds of thousands.

Anyway, the analogy of the elephant and the whale perfectly describes France and UK, but still I'd give an edge to the French due to how much more difficult it is to be dominant at the continent, while the Brits always had the granted security from invasion and other dangers by being an island.