permanent
lodgment; but in no case was the success at all commensurate with the
expense of life and treasure sacrificed, and no permanent hold was made
on either the maritime frontiers of France or her allies. This certainly
was owing to no inferiority of skill and bravery on the part of the
British navy, as the battles of Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the almost
total annihilation of the French marine, have but too plainly proven.
Why then did these places, escape? We know of no other reason, than that
_they were fortified_; and that the French knew how to defend their
fortifications. The British maritime expeditions to Quiberon, Holland,
Boulogne, the Scheldt, Constantinople, Buenos Ayres, &c., sufficiently
prove the ill-success, and the waste of life and treasure with which
they must always be attended. But when her naval power was applied to
the destruction of the enemy's marine, and in transporting her land
forces to solid bases of operations on the soil of her allies, in
Portugal and Belgium, the fall of Napoleon crowned the glory of their
achievements.

[Footnote 18: Only eighteen and a half miles across the Channel at the
narrowest place.]

Let us now examine the several British naval attacks on our own forts,
in the wars of the Revolution and of 1812.

In 1776 Sir Peter Parker, with a British fleet of nine vessels, carrying
about two hundred and seventy[19] guns, attacked Fort Moultrie, in
Charleston harbor, which was then armed with only twenty-six guns, and
garrisoned by only three hundred and seventy-five regulars and a few
militia. In this contest the British were entirely defeated, and lost,
in killed and wounded, two hundred and five men, while their whole two
hundred and seventy guns killed and wounded only thirty-two men in the
fort. Of this trial of strength, which was certainly a fair one, Cooper
in his Naval History, says:--"It goes fully to prove the important
military position that ships cannot withstand forts, when the latter are
properly armed, constructed, and garrisoned. General Moultrie says only
thirty rounds from the battery were fired, and was of opinion that the
want of powder alone prevented the Americans from destroying the
men-of-war."

[Footnote 19: These vessels _rated_ two hundred and fifty-four guns, but
the number actually carried is stated to have been two hundred and
seventy.]

In 1814 a British fleet of four vessels, carrying ninety-two guns,
attacked Fort Boyer, a small re