Tessé on August 14 retakes the crucial heights of Santa Catarina, which the Allies had stormed a week earlier; and Eugene, finding his retreat menaced and little chance of taking Toulon, has to abandon his attempt on August 22, and fall back across the Var, having lost ten thousand men in this ill-fated enterprise.

Shovell, before he evacuates, bombards the French harbor and is able to sink two French ships of the line and damage severely two others.

The campaign's only fruit is that, in order to prevent their ships falling into the enemy's hands, the French have sunk their whole squadron of more than forty six ships of between fifty and one hundred and ten guns in the harbor.

King Louis XIV had given orders that they be sunk and later be refloated.

He was concerned that the Royal Navy would burn the ships; the three-deckers would lie with only their upper decks showing above the water.

Much of the damage sustained, however, proves irreparable; it is estimated that the French Navy had lost fifteen ships of the line in this operation, and thereby its ability contest the English control of the Mediterranean.