On the 4th of September, 1779, the French fleet,
under Count d'Estaing, appeared suddenly off the mouth
of the Savannah River. Immediately all the outlying
detachments of the British army were called into
Savannah. On the 23d Lincoln and his men joined
the French from Charleston, and volunteers from South
Carolina flocked into their camp. But while d'Estaing
was opening regular approaches, the soldiers of the
garrison and the negroes of the town were busily
strengthening the fortifications. It was too late in
the season for the French fleet to remain with safety
on the coast. D'Estaing determined to try an
assault. This should have been done earlier, before
reinforcements had been received by the British from
Beaufort, and before their works had been strengthened,
or it should have been postponed until those
works had been crippled. The assault was
undertaken on the 9th of October. Both Frenchmen and
Americans behaved with spirit, and planted their
banners on the parapets of Savannah, but both were
repulsed with great slaughter. Colonel von Porbeck,
of the Regiment von Wissenbach, was complimented
in Prevost's report. A week later the French sailed
away, while some of the Americans returned with
Lincoln to Charleston, and others dispersed to their
homes.[1]
- ↑ According to the “Histoire de la Derniere Guerre,” 101 n., the French and American army numbered five thousand five hundred and twenty-four. The British had—white men, three thousand and eighty-five; Indians, eighty; negroes, four thousand. Stedman (vol. ii. p. 127) gives the number of the garrison at less than twenty-five hundred white men. The French loss was about seven hundred; the American loss not far from two hundred and fifty. The journal of the Regiment von Wissenbach gives the British loss, killed and wounded, at fifty-six; about one half of the number usually given.
