Brevet Colonel McIntosh and his inexperienced officers, who left Vera Cruz for the interior--it will be recalled--about the first of June, 1847, with a well-advertised convoy including a large amount of specie, dependent on wild mustangs under raw, half-mutinous drivers largely ignorant of English, received the full benefit of this ambitious feeling. Near Tolomé and at Paso de Ovejas he lost men, wagons and pack-mules; and at the national bridge there was a genuine skirmish, in which a number of Americans were killed or wounded. Out of about 130 wagons twenty-four had to be abandoned in the low country; and a little way above Jalapa, though strongly reinforced, the troops had to fight again. General Pierce, who left Vera Cruz about six weeks later than McIntosh, had similar experiences. Early in August Major Lally set out from the coast with a few more than 1000 soldiers, two 6-pounders and sixty-four wagons. He lost no merchandise, but his four fights cost him nearly 100 men killed, wounded and missing; and Captain Wells, who followed Lally with some 200 recruits and additional ammunition, lost forty and had to retreat. These and other affairs proved that irregulars, favored by the geography of the region, were capable of doing substantial harm.[29.7] But in Vera Cruz, as in every other quarter where they operated, though perhaps nowhere else in so marked a degree, the lack of morale, which enabled the guerilla system to exist, proved the cause of its failure. Poor arms, poor ammunition, poor marksmanship, and the want of artillery might have been remedied, or at least might have been offset by the counter-balancing advantages; but this defect was fatal. The Mexican guerillas were very different from what the guerillas of Spain had been. They fought like savages without the excuse of savages, for they knew better. Infuriated by their treacheries and cruelties, the Americans were persistent and unsparing in severity. Patrols who seemed never to sleep hunted out their nests in the mountains. On the march, flanking parties would force their way through the woods five miles or more from the road to catch them between two fires. The torch was applied with much liberality on suspicion, and sometimes on general principles, to huts and villages; and in the end a black swath of devastation, leagues in width, marked the route.[29.8]