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.