Late in February, 1880, the Chileans disembarked a fine army of fourteen thousand men at a seaport sixty miles north of the allies' main position, and lost no time in occupying the interior as far as Moquegua at the foot of the Andes. Their first object was to cut the allied armies off from any communication with their respective countries. A small Peruvian force made an attempt to hold Torata, a point strategically important because it commanded the entrance into the Andes from Bolivia and Peru, but was unsuccessful. The allied armies were now bottled up in a little valley where provisions would surely shortly fail. The Chileans advanced south across the desert upon Tacna, and the allies took a strong defensive position on a ridge, flanked by steep ravines, with a sloping glacis in front. Vastly superior in artillery, though only slightly outnumbering the allies, the Chileans thought themselves justified in assaulting the position. They opened the battle by a cannonade in which their magnificent Krupp guns did terrific execution, and under cover of the fire the infantry advanced in four columns of twenty-four hundred men each. Approaching the trenches they were met by a storm of rifle bullets through which they charged bayonet in hand. Meanwhile the allies on the crest of the sand-hills suffered terribly from the plunging artillery fire. The Bolivians, holding the weakest part of the line, bore the brunt of the attack. Once the Chileans wavered, but a supporting cavalry charge quickly drove back the advancing enemy, and after two hours of desperate fighting the sturdy Bolivian Indians gave way, their position was carried, and the allied army fled all along the line. Though the Chileans had lost over two thousand, the losses of the allies were greater. No way of retreat lay open; they scattered in confusion; and their army virtually ceased to exist. A couple of thousand Peruvians held out in Arica for a month, deliberately devoting themselves to certain death, but the place was carried by an assault in which quarter was neither given nor asked.