Three days later the truce was declared at an end, and in the beleaguered city all eyes were fixed anxiously upon the fleet. Although there were rumors in the air of its departure, the people still hoped they might be false as so many others had proved. About two o’clock, however, smoke was seen rising from one of the vessels, and it was soon evident that the whole squadron was getting up steam. One after another lifted anchor and began to move; and an hour later the huge flagship, _La Bretagne_, glided majestically past the lighthouse on the outermost point of the harbor, leaving the last of the Italian Bourbons to his fate. With the French fleet, vanished the last hope of rescue; and from this time until the end of the siege, nearly a month later, Gaeta was completely cut off from the rest of the world, and surrounded on all sides by the enemy. With the increase of famine and sickness the situation grew daily worse. Help from without could no longer be looked for, and rumors of treachery began to be heard among the troops. The barracks were damp, the hospitals overflowing, and they were tired of a struggle that could have but one end. The King and his brothers worked bravely to keep up the courage of the garrison, and the Queen was untiring in her efforts to relieve the sick and suffering; but even they had lost hope. All correspondence between Napoleon and King Francis had ceased on the twelfth of December, but about the middle of January a vessel arrived from France bringing a confidential letter from the Empress Eugénie to Maria Sophia. In it she declared frankly and without circumlocution that it would be as well to abandon the defence of Gaeta which had cost so many lives, since it would be quite useless to look for aid from any European power—the latter sentence underlined. This left no room for misunderstanding. At last the King realized that his cause was lost—that all his wife’s splendid energy and the loyalty of his troops had been wasted in a hopeless struggle. On the twenty-seventh of January he received a letter from Napoleon informing him that the French corvette, _La Movette_, had been prepared for the accommodation of Their Majesties in case of the surrender of Gaeta, and would remain in the Bay of Naples awaiting their orders. The town was now only a smoking heap of ruins. The explosion of powder magazines had caused even greater destruction than the enemy’s guns, and the casemate in which the royal family had taken refuge might be destroyed at any moment should the siege be continued. The garrison was reduced to twelve thousand men with over twelve hundred in the various hospitals, most of them victims of the epidemic of typhus which had proved so fatal. Among those who had succumbed already to the disease were four of the King’s generals and the priest, Father Borelli, who had remained in Gaeta to minister to the sick and wounded.