The loyalists of America and their times

by Egerton Ryerson

The arrangements for the attack having been made, the whole French fleet came to anchor at the mouth of the Savannah river on the 1st day of September. He was occupied ten days in landing his troops and artillery; on the 15th of September a junction was formed between the French and General Lincoln,[22] and with the utmost confidence of success.[23]

They determined to take the town by siege rather than by storm in the first instance.[24]

On the 16th of September they demanded, in a very confident and haughty tone, the surrender of the town to the arms of the King of France; but General Prevost declined surrendering on a general summons, and requested a specific statement of the terms of it. The Count replied that it was for the besieged to propose the terms. General Prevost requested and obtained twenty-four hours' suspension of hostilities to prepare his answer. Before the twenty-four hours had elapsed, Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, with several hundred men who had been stationed at Beaufort, made their way through inland channels and swamps, and joined the royal standard at Savannah; and General Prevost gave his answer of no surrender. The French and Americans, who formed a junction the evening after, resolved to besiege the town, and consumed several days in preparing for it, while the works of the garrison were hourly strengthened by great labour and skill. From the 24th of September to the 4th of October a heavy cannonade on both sides was kept up; but the allied army, finding that they could make little or no impression on the works of the besieged, resolved on a bombardment, with a stronger cannonading than ever. On the 4th of October the besiegers opened on the town three batteries, with nine mortars, thirty-seven pieces of cannon from the land side, and fifteen from the water. The firing from these batteries lasted, with little intermission, during five days; but the damage they did was confined mostly to the town, where some houses were destroyed and some women and children killed. Soon after the commencement of the cannonade, General Prevost requested permission to remove the women and children out of the town to a place of safety; but this request was refused in offensive terms on the part of Count D'Estaing, by the advice of General Lincoln, on the pretext that a desire of secreting the plunder lately taken from the South Carolinas was covered under the veil of humanity, but the real reason was that the surrender of the town would be expedited by keeping the women and children in it.[25]

Count D'Estaing, finding that his five days' cannonading made no impression on the defensive works of the city, and his officers remonstrating against his continuing to risk so valuable a fleet on a dangerous coast, in the hurricane season, and at so great a distance from shore that it might be surprised by a British fleet, now completely repaired in the West Indies and fully manned, he decided to assault the town. The attack was commenced in three columns on the 9th, an hour before sunrise.

"Though the besieged were prepared for the assault, and their fire was very destructive, the assailants pressed on and planted (for a few minutes) the standard of both nations on the walls; but the contest being still obstinately continued, the assailants were brought to a pause by the fall of Count Pulaski (commanding an American corps), who received a mortal wound; and Major Glaziers, who commanded the garrison, rushing at the head of a body of grenadiers and marines, drove back the allied troops, who were ordered to retreat. The French lost seven hundred men; the Americans, two hundred and thirty-four. The British garrison lost only fifty-five in killed and wounded. On the 16th of October the siege was raised by the Count, who thus for the third time failed in his co-operation with the Americans, after the fairest prospects of success."[26]

Mr. Bancroft states the final struggle of this eventful contest, and the results and effects of it on the Southern colonies, in the following words:—"After an obstinate struggle of fifty-five minutes to carry the redoubt, the assailants retreated before a charge of grenadiers and marines, led gallantly by Maitland. The injury sustained by the British was trifling; the loss of the Americans was about two hundred; of the French, thrice as many. The French withdrew their ships, and sailed for France; the patriots of Georgia who had joined them fled to the backwoods or across the river.

"Lincoln repaired to Charleston, and was followed by what remained of his army; the militia of South Carolina returned to their homes; its continental regiments were melting away; and its paper money became so nearly worthless, that a bounty of twenty-five hundred dollars for twenty-one months' service had no attraction. The dwellers near the sea between Charleston and Savannah were shaken in their allegiance, not knowing where to find protection. Throughout the State the people were disheartened, and foreboded desolation."[27]

I have given a more minute account of Count D'Estaing and his abortive expeditions to America, and of his final attack upon Savannah and its results; how completely disappointed were the American revolutionists thus far in their unnatural alliance with France against England; how little mutual respect or good-will, and what quarrels occurred, whenever they came or attempted to act together, whether at Boston, or Long Island, or Charleston, or Savannah; and how much feebler the army and more gloomy the prospects of the Congress party were at the end of 1779 than they were two years before, when the alliance with France was formed. Dr. Ramsay well sums up these events as follows:

"The campaign of 1779 is remarkable for the feeble exertions of the Americans. Accidental causes, which had previously excited their activity, had in a great measure ceased to have influence. An enthusiasm for liberty made them comparatively disregard property and brave all dangers in the first years of the war. The successes of their arms near the beginning of 1777, and the hope of capturing Burgoyne's army in the close of it, together with the brisk circulation of a large quantity of paper-money, in good credit, made that year both active and decisive. The flattering prospects inspired by the alliance with France in 1778 banished all fears of the success of the revolution, but the failure of every scheme of co-operation produced a despondency of mind unfavourable to great exertions. Instead of driving the British out of the country, as the Americans vainly presumed, the campaigns of 1778 and 1779 terminated without any direct advantage from the French fleet sent to their aid. Expecting too much from their allies, and then failing in these expectations, they were less prepared to prosecute the war with their own resources than they would have been if D'Estaing had not touched on their coast. Their army was reduced in its numbers and badly clothed.

"In the first years of the war, the mercantile character was lost in the military spirit of the times; but in the progress of it the inhabitants, cooling in their enthusiasm, gradually returned to their former habits of lucrative business. This made distinctions between the army and citizens, and was unfriendly to military exertions. While several foreign events tended to the embarrassment of Great Britain,[28] and indirectly to the establishment of independence, a variety of internal causes relaxed the exertions of the Americans, and for a time made it doubtful whether they would ultimately be independent citizens or conquered subjects."[29]