This junction effected, M'Intosh returned to Miller's plantation, three miles from Savannah, where Lincoln, with the main army, arrived on the sixteenth, and made his headquarters.
While Lincoln and his force were approaching, the French effected a landing at Beuley and Thunderbolt, without opposition. M'Intosh linked D'Estaing to make an immediate upon the attack British works. D'Estaing would not listen, but advanced within three miles of Savannah, Sept. 16, 1779 and demanded an unconditional surrender to the King of France. Prevost refused to listen to any summons which did not contain definite provisions, and asked for a truce until the next day to consider the subject. This was granted by D'Estaing, and, in the meanwhile, twelve hundred white men and negroes were employed in strengthening the fortifications, and mounting additional ordnance. This truce Lincoln at once perceived was fatal to the success of the besiegers, for he had ascertained that Maitland, with eight hundred men, was on his way
* Count Casimir Pulaski was a native of Lithuania, in Poland. He was educated for the law, but stirring military events had their influence upon his mind, and he entered the army. With his father, the old Count Pulaski, he was engaged in the rebellion against Stanislaus, king of Poland, in 1769. The old count was taken prisoner, and put to death. In 1770, the young Count Casimir was elected commander-in-chief of the insurgents, but was not able to collect a competent force to act efficiently, for a pestilence had swept off 250,000 Poles the previous year. In 1771, himself and thirty-nine others entered Warsaw, disguised as peasants, for the purpose of seizing the king. The object was to plaee him at the head of the army, force him to act in that position, and call around him the Poles to beat back the Russian forces which Catharine had sent against them. They succeeded in taking him from his carriage in the streets, and carrying him out of the city; but were obliged to leave him, not far from the walls, and escape. Pulaski's little army was soon afterward defeated, and he entered the service of the Turks, who were fighting Russia. His estates were confiscated, himself outlawed. He went to Paris, had an interview there with Dr. Franklin, and came to America in 1777. He joined the army under Washington, and, as we have seen, was placed in command of cavalry.
* His legion did good service at the North. Early in the spring of 1778 he was ordered to Little Egg Harbor, on the New Jersey coast. His force consisted of cavalry and infantry, with a single field-piece from Proctor's artillery. While on his way from Trenton to Little Egg Harbor, and when within eight miles of the coast, he was surprised by a party of British, and a large portion of his infantry was bayoneted. Julien, a deserter from his corps, had given information of his position; the surprise was complete. His loss was forty men, among them Lieutenant-eolonel Baron De Botzen. Pulaski was ordered to the South in February, 1779, and was in active service under Lincoln until the siege of Savannah, in October of that year, where he was mortally wounded. His banner, as we have noticed on page 392, was preserved, and carried to Baltimore. He was taken to the United States brig Wasp, where he died, and was buried under a large tree on St. Helen's Island, about fifty miles from Savannah, by his first lieutenant and personal friend, Charles Litomiski. Funeral honors were paid to his memory at Charleston, and, on the 29th of November, Congress voted the erection of a monument to his memory. Like other monuments ordered by the Continental Congress, the stone for Pulaski's is yet in the quarry. The citizens of Savannah reared the one delineated on page 720, in commemoration ot the services of Greene and Pulaski.