On the night of the 4th-5th the army crawled off on the road to Vejer, abandoning nearly all its material in its camps. An attempt was made to fire a mass of abandoned vehicles, but the rain stopped it. Next morning the French were passing the defile of Torre Peña, under the not very effective fire of an English frigate, which kept as close to the shore as was possible on a very rough day. The four guns from the battery at this point were brought on, with much toil, and no wounded were abandoned. On the 6th the column reached Tayvilla, where it found a convoy and 100 horses, which were of inestimable value, for those with the field-force were completely spent. Nevertheless the one 12-pounder brought off from Tarifa was abandoned in the mud. On the 7th Vejer was reached, and the expedition was at an end. The troops of Victor’s division, after a short rest, went back to the Cadiz Lines, those of Leval’s division marched for Xeres. Thus ended the leaguer of Tarifa, which cost the besiegers about 500 lives, more by sickness than by casualties in the trenches. There were also some deserters--fifteen Poles came over in a body and surrendered to Captain Carroll on the 3rd[127], and other individuals stole in from time to time. But the main loss to the French, beyond that of prestige, was that the battalions which had formed part of the expeditionary force were so tired out and war-worn, that for several weeks they continued to fill the hospitals in the Lines with sick, and were incapable of further active service. Wherefore Soult could not send any appreciable detachment to help Suchet on the side of Valencia: the cavalry brigade, which sacked Murcia on January 26 and killed La Carrera,[128] was his only contribution to the operations on the east side of Spain. The field-force which might otherwise have accompanied Pierre Soult’s cavalry raid had been used up in the Tarifa expedition. [127] _Defence of Tarifa_, p. 75. [128] See page 8 above.