A short and sparsely attended white nationalist rally broke up late Sunday as police ushered the attendees into white vans and drove them away from a crowd of thousands of angry protesters in downtown Washington.

The rally’s end followed a day in which large numbers of police officers sought — for the most part successfully — to keep the two sides from clashing in a repeat of last year’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The small band of demonstrators at the “Unite the Right 2” rally, who numbered about two dozen, were being transported to the Rosslyn Metro station, a Fairfax County official said. From there, they would take a train to Vienna, where they would be greeted by county police who could escort them to their cars if necessary. Washington Post