Desperate had been the struggle and great was the victory. During the hottest of the fire General Eliot took his station on the King's Bastion, exposed to the guns of the two most powerful battering-ships. Nothing could exceed the coolness and courage of the troops during this trying day; the steady and incessant fire was never allowed to slacken, the guns were served, says the governor, "with the deliberate coolness and precision of school practice, but the exertions of the men were infinitely superior." The furnaces for heating the shot were found to be too few, and huge fires were kindled in convenient corners of the streets. An immense amount of ammunition was expended on both sides; three hundred twenty of the enemy's cannon were in play throughout the day, and to these were opposed only ninety-six guns from the garrison. Upward of eight thousand shot and seven hundred sixteen barrels of gunpowder were fired away by the garrison. When the unparalleled force of the bombardment is considered, the casualties among the troops were remarkably few: one officer, two sergeants, and thirteen men only were killed, and five officers and sixty-three men wounded. The enemy's losses, on the contrary, were very great; on the floating batteries alone one thousand four hundred seventy-three men were either killed, wounded, or missing. By the evening of the 14th the bay was cleared of the shattered wrecks, and not a vestige of the formidable armament, which the day before had been the hope and pride of Spain, remained. The contest was at an end, and the united strength of two ambitious and powerful nations had been humbled by a straitened garrison of six thousand effective men. With the destruction of the floating batteries the siege was virtually concluded. In Spain the news was received with consternation and despair. The thousands who on the preceding day crowded upon the neighboring hills, and with eager anxiety awaited the anticipated victory, returned to their homes disappointed and chagrined. They had been taught to believe that the attack would be crushing and invincible; that the batteries were indestructible; that the fortress must be annihilated by their overwhelming fire; but instead of these disasters they had seen every ship destroyed or sunk, with all their guns, and two thousand men of their crews either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. In the first moment of consternation the inventor of those vast machines, upon the success of which the whole attack depended, could not restrain his poignant grief and was led into confessions which he afterward regretted. Writing to the French ambassador, Montmorin, he said: "I have burned the Temple of Ephesus; everything is lost, and through my fault. What comforts me under my misfortune is that the honor of the two kings remains untarnished."