Here the attacking force was _four_ times as great as that of the garrison; nevertheless they were unsuccessful after several bombardments and a siege of five months.
In July of the same year, 1801, Admiral Saumarez, with an English fleet of six ships of the line and two smaller vessels, carrying in all five hundred and two guns, attacked the Spanish and French defences of Algesiras.

Supposing the floating forces of the contending parties to be equal, gun for gun, (which is certainly a very fair estimate for the attacking force, considering the circumstances of the case,) we have a French land-battery of only twelve guns opposed by an English floating force of one hundred and ninety-six guns.

Notwithstanding this inequality of nearly _seventeen_ to _one_, the little battery compelled the superior naval force to retreat with great loss.
Shortly after this, the French and Spanish fleets attacked the same English squadron with a force of nearly _three_ to _one_, but met with a most signal defeat; whereas with a land-battery of only _one_ to _seventeen_, the same party 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.