It has been said that, with better gunnery on the part of the French, disaster must have resulted to the attacking force; and precisely the same criticism has been applied to Trafalgar.[207] Now, putting out of consideration that Great Britain had at this date been for five years at war with France, and that British seamen had thus gained an experience of French gunnery upon which Nelson could reckon, the justice of this criticism further depends upon the circumstances of the wind and the character of the approach. An attack made with a very light wind, leaving the assailant long under the enemy's fire, or with a fresh breeze on a course that lies close to the wind, thereby bringing the greatest strain upon the spars, is a very different thing from one made with a good working breeze well abaft the beam, which was the case at the Nile. One cannot dogmatize on probabilities when, from the nature of the case, there are few precedents on which to rest an opinion. In bearing down against a fleet under way, of which there are many instances, the experience in scarcely any case was that so many spars were lost as to prevent the assailant reaching the hostile line; and at the Nile, once the anchor was down, the loss of a spar or two was of little consequence. It seems altogether probable that, had the French gunnery been much better than it was, the British ships would yet have reached their station; and once there, the tactical combination adopted would still have given them the victory, though more dearly bought. If, however, Brueys's arrangements had been more skilfully made, resembling those of Hood at St. Kitt's, and if the French gunnery had been very good, it may safely be conceded that the British admiral would have needed more circumspection in making his attack. To say that under totally different circumstances different results will obtain, is a species of prophecy with which no one need quarrel. If, in the shock of war, all things on both sides are exactly equal,—if the two admirals, their captains and crews, the ships of the fleets, the tactical arrangements, are equal, each to each,—there can be no result. When inequality, whether original or induced by circumstance, enters in any one of these factors, a result will follow proportional to the disparity. When this is great, the result will be great; when small, small. At the Battle of the Nile, the difference in admirals, in captains, in crews, in gunnery, and in tactical combination, were all greatly against the French, and the result was a disaster more than usually complete.