had been victorious. What proof can be more
decisive of the superiority of guns on shore over those afloat!

In 1803 the English garrison of Diamond Rock, near Port Royal Bay, with
only one hundred men and some fifteen guns, repelled a French squadron
of two seventy-four-gun ships, a frigate, and a brig, assisted by a land
attack of two hundred troops. There was not a single man killed or
wounded in the redoubt, while the French lost fifty men! The place was
afterwards reduced by famine.

In 1806 a French battery on Cape Licosa, of only two guns and a garrison
of twenty-five men, resisted the attacks of a British eighty-gun ship
and two frigates. The carriage of one of the land-guns failed on the
second shot, so that, in fact, only _one_ of them was available during
the action. Here was _a single piece of ordnance_ and a garrison of
_twenty-five men,_ opposed to a naval force of _over one hundred and
fifty guns_ and about _thirteen hundred men._ And what effects were
produced by this strange combat? The attacking force lost _thirty-seven_
men killed and wounded, the eighty-gun ship was much disabled, while the
fort and garrison escaped entirely unharmed! What could not be effected
by force was afterwards obtained by negotiation.

In 1808 a French land-battery of only _three_ guns, near Fort Trinidad,
drove off an English seventy-four-gun ship, and a bomb-vessel.

In 1813 Leghorn, whose defences were of a very mediocre character, and
whose garrison at that time was exceedingly weak, was attacked by an
English squadron of six ships, carrying over three hundred guns, and a
land force of one thousand troops. The whole attempt was a perfect
failure.

"In 1814, when the English advanced against Antwerp," says Colonel
Mitchell, an English historian, "Fort Frederick, a small work of only
two guns, was established in a bend of the Polder Dyke, at some distance
below Lillo. The armament was a long eighteen-pounder and a five and a
half inch howitzer. From this post the French determined to dislodge the
English, and an eighty-gun ship dropped down with the tide and anchored
near the Flanders shore, about six hundred yards from the British
battery. By her position she was secured from the fire of the
eighteen-pounder, and exposed to that of the howitzer only. As soon as
every thing was made tight her broadside was opened; and if noise and
smoke were alone sufficient to ensure success in war, as so many of the
moderns seem to