VIII

The Allies Resort to the Spade

THE arrival of the Beaufort garrison “made us about 2,000 strong and so very saucy,” said an English officer, “as to refuse to let Monsieur and Jonathan in.”¹ The British strength was actually greater. Records show that 2,360 men were present and fit for duty. The French overestimated the number of the troops in Savannah, fixing the total as high as 3,790. According to a summary compiled from information furnished by British deserters, Prevost’s troops were composed as follows:

Against the British defenders the Allies could muster an effective total of around 5,500 regulars and militia. The Americans numbered approximately 1,000 Continental troops and 1,100 militia while the French forces consisted of 3,182 European soldiers, 545 Negro troops from San Domingo, and 156 West Indian volunteers.² D’Estaing’s army was made up by regiment or detachment as follows:

While there was still a sizeable difference between the two armies, the arrival of the reinforcements resolved any question of surrender. At the British Council of War on the 16th it was the unanimous opinion that Savannah should be defended to the last extremity. It was convened merely for “form’s sake” after he received d’Estaing’s summons, the view of the army being already well known, wrote General Prevost. But there is another version.

Garden’s Anecdotes of the American Revolution states that when Colonel Maitland arrived at Savannah the deliberations were taking place at the Governor’s council chamber. “With hurried step” he approached the table. “Striking the hilt of his claymore against it,” Maitland spoke up in his Scotch dialect, mincing no words as usual. “The man who utters a syllable recommending surrender, makes me his decided enemy,” declared Maitland; “it is necessary that either he or I should fall.” “So resolute a speech, at a moment so critical, produced the happiest effect on the minds of all,” said Garden, who added that “Hope and courage regained their influence in every mind.”

Garden’s work is hardly the most reliable evidence of the past. But the story finds contemporary support elsewhere. According to an account that reached New York after the Siege, the Council of War before which Colonel Maitland appeared upon his arrival at Savannah was deliberating the answer to the French and even the matter of surrender itself. When he heard that term mentioned “the gallant Colonel arose though almost quite worn out with fatigue.” He “abhorred” the word “Capitulation,’’ declared Maitland, who in a firm tone warned that “if he should survive and go home to Britain, he would report to the King the name of the first officer who should dare to propose a capitulation.”³

A similar account came back to England. The Reverend Colvill wrote in a preface to his poem “Savannah” that “The council of war were on the very brink of signing a capitulation, when COLONEL MAITLAND gave his voice for a most vigorous resistance, and threatened to report the officer of his SOVEREIGN who should propose such a cowardly surrender.” To like effect was a letter published in December, 1779, in The Scots Magazine wherein a merchant of Savannah declared that this “most determined brave officer, could not hear the word capitulation with any degree of patience; but took every opportunity of openly declaring what he thought a man deserved that could think of it.”

A passage from the journal of a French officer is entitled perhaps to weight. Meyronnet de Saint-Marc says that some British deserters on being interrogated by the French about affairs in the town reported that at the outset the garrison was little disposed to a serious defense. However, the whole situation changed, they said, upon the arrival of Colonel Maitland. “That brave officer had engaged them in a vigorous defense, putting them to work on the fortifications tout de suite.”⁴

Shortly before the expiration of the truce General Prevost’s answer was delivered. “The unanimous Determination has been made,” he informed d’Estaing, “that though we cannot look upon our Post as absolutely inexpungable, yet that it may be and ought to be defended.” To the stilted phrases of military diplomacy the oral reply said to have been given by the blunt-spoken Prevost is a sharp contrast. “The King, my Master, pays these men to fight, and they must fight, and we decline your terms,” he is quoted as telling d’Estaing’s emissary.⁵ In his orders of the day the British commander expressed his “Unlimited Dependence” on the “known Stedyness & Spirit of the Troops . . . Doubting Nothing of a Glorious Victory should the Enemy try their Strength.”

Meanwhile General Lincoln’s forces had come up during the 16th, encamping west of Savannah. “I have not been able to refuse the Army of the United States, uniting itself with that of the King,” d’Estaing informed Prevost in one of his communications that day—strange sort of talk about an Ally. One sometimes needs to recall Choiseul’s statement several years before. “M. d’Estaing in whom I thought I saw a superior talent is a fool,” that Minister had remarked, “and a dangerous one.” Monsieur le Comte was evidently flushed by his recent successes in the West Indies. He had quaffed the heady wine of Grenada and St. Vincent. “Caesar and Alexander were nothing to him,” said a critic who described d’Estaing as the “Wonder of the Age.”⁶

The Count had been lulled into overconfidence by the total lack of opposition to his landing and to the march from Beaulieu. “I am at the moment of persuading myself that the resistance of Savannah will be very feeble,” he admits in his Notes. Meyronnet de Saint-Marc quotes him as remarking to one of his aides on the way to Savannah from Beaulieu, “I am convinced that if we march right on the city sword in hand, we will take it in spite of our small number.” To this complacency the Americans had contributed their share. General Lincoln and Governor Rutledge had assured the French that “Confessing ye insufficiency of the works about the Town of Savannah, and the small number of Troops to support them—we think that there can hardly be a doubt but if the British were closed in by the French and American Troops they would be forced to surrender immediately.”⁷ Colonel Brétigny and the Americans had even informed the Count (the latter reported to his Ministry) that “two fifty-gun ships and some mulattoes” were all that were needed for the job.

The failure to attack at once was surprising to many observers. “Why did he not on the 13th, or at least on the morning of the 16th, storm and take this miserable sand pile with fixed bayonets?” asked the Hessian officer Hinrichs, to whose dispassionate military eye it was “inconceivable” that d’Estaing permitted the “slightest delay after the 12th.” “It is amazing,” wrote General Prevost two years later, “that a man of the ability and recognized reputation of Count D’Estaing should have delayed his attack long enough for us to complete our works and batteries and to permit Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland to enter the town.” “Any four hours before the junction,” said General Lee, “was sufficient to have taken Savannah.” Ten minutes was all that was required, claimed British officers.

“I hope you approve the truce I have granted the enemy,” d’Estaing blandly inquired of General Lincoln on the 17th. He apologized for his failure to accord the Americans an opportunity to look over his letter granting Prevost’s request for time. “It did not seem to me to be worth disturbing you about after the fatigue of a long march.”⁸ What Lincoln thought about all this is not recorded. But if one story be true, there was wrath in certain quarters. To Colonel Francis Marion the respite given the British was incomprehensible. “I never beheld Marion in so great a passion,” Colonel Horry is quoted as saying. “I was actually afraid he would have broken out on General Lincoln.” “My God!” the usually taciturn South Carolinian is said to have exclaimed when he learned of the truce, “who ever heard of any thing like this before!—first allow an enemy to entrench, and then fight him!”⁹

To these criticisms d’Estaing could reply he was not prepared for an attack in force. “We would not be able to undertake anything much in the way of an offensive today,” he informed Lincoln on the 17th. Many of his troops were not ashore. The Americans had agreed at Charlestown that, “barring accidents,” one thousand men would be in Georgia by the 11th. The “accident” had happened. General McIntosh had not sent down flats from Augusta on time. At Zubly’s Ferry only one canoe was to be found. A flat had to be built. Lincoln’s troops were unable to complete the crossing of the Savannah until the 13 th, two valuable days being lost there.

The addition of the Beaufort reinforcements made a frontal attack a doubtful and costly proposition. The French had two other alternatives—they could either depart or they could lay siege to the town. But the French had to stay now. The American alliance itself would have been jeopardized if d’Estaing went away. “London, America and even Paris,” he said, “would have worse than dishonored me.” “One would have supposed,” he argued, “that I had secret orders not to aid the Americans. It would have been a never-ending source of complaints, of suspicions between the two countries.”¹⁰

The Count remembered only too well how close he had come to disrupting the alliance the year before when he sailed off from Newport to fight an English squadron and found himself unable to resume the operations there on account of the damage sustained by his vessels in a storm. As a result the siege had to be raised by the Americans. “The devil has got into the fleet,” wrote the exasperated Nathanael Greene. General Sullivan had publicly insulted France. “Heroes of Flight,” Samuel Barrett angrily called the French, exclaiming, “if this is Gallic faith we have formed a sweet and hopeful alliance!” Such accusations had imposed on the Vice-Admiral what he called the “painful but necessary law of profound silence.” They still rankled. John Sullivan, to be sure, was a gauche pettifogger. But Count d’Estaing could not afford to have the charge of deserting his Allies lodged against him a second time.

Under the direction of the French engineer, Captain Antoine O’Connor, trenches were commenced near the English center on the night of the 22nd. The next morning the British awoke to find that on a moonlit night (“très beau clair de lune”) the enemy had entrenched themselves “up to the chin” less than three hundred yards from their principal works. Lack of tools proved a handicap, but as time passed the Allied trenches were advanced to within two hundred yards of the British lines. “The Monsieurs” could be heard “working like Devils every Night,” said an Englishman. Captain O’Connor was the only engineer d’Estaing had brought to Georgia. The Count was highly pleased with the services of this young officer at Savannah. He had had to double, d’Estaing said, in many jobs, including “the most dangerous reconnaissances, laying out trenches, superintending the workers and service in the trenches from which one was able to get him away only by express order.” In spare moments O’Connor found time to write a journal of the Siege, a hum-drum affair which was to serve, however, as a basis for the Vice-Admiral’s more interesting commentaries.

No breach of the English works by the conventional system of approaches and parallels was planned, said d’Estaing. It was to be no regular siege. He had in mind only a support for his batteries. “A trench against an entrenched camp defended by a force as numerous as that of the attacking one would seem absolutely chimerical,” he explained in his Notes. “All my proceedings would have been so,” he added, “if I had had any other object in view than that of establishing and of supporting batteries as close as possible.” The hopes of the Allies were now staked on intimidating the defenders into surrender by a bombardment of Savannah.

With great difficulty cannon and mortars were brought from the fleet via the new depot established at Thunderbolt, which was closer to the town than the Beaulieu base. The troops were rewarded with 100 crowns for each 18 pounder delivered on trucks hastily built by American carpenters. Four batteries were erected. As an example to his men, d’Estaing himself assisted in the work. The battery on the Allied left was composed of six 18 pounders and an equal number of 12 pounders. On the right a second battery of five 18 pounders and seven 12’s was erected. Behind the trenches another French battery of nine mortars was commenced. The Americans established a battery of four 6 pounders, representing their entire artillery strength.

Despite the unhappy turn affairs had taken the Americans remained optimistic. It was in their nature “to promise much and to have little,” said d’Estaing who complained that “This nation always counts on having what it lacks.” The “hauteur” of Prevost’s refusal to surrender proved a “little surprising” to General Lincoln but nevertheless, wrote the Count, the American commander remained confident that the British would capitulate. Dipping his quill deep in venom, d’Estaing described Lincoln’s reactions to the turn of events. “Mon tranquile Confrère, heureux dans Sa quiétude inébranlable, ne Doutoit de rien” [“My tranquil colleague, happy in his indomitable placidity, entertained no doubts“]. Despite all that had happened General Lincoln was convinced, continued the French commander, that the enemy would capitulate at “the first sound of large cannon and the first bomb thrown into the city.”¹¹ The mortars were what the Americans really relied on and believed in. “In American eyes,” the Count wrote in his Notes, “the mortars represent the ark of the covenant and the sure way of making the walls of Jericho fall.” “I hoped so,” added d’Estaing, “but I doubted it.”

It required no small amount of gall on his part to accuse Prevost of “hauteur” or Lincoln of complacency. We learn, however, from other sources about the optimism of the Americans. On September 27th Colonel Joseph Clay wrote to a friend that “General Lincoln is very well and tho’ undergoing great fatigue in fine spirits. . . . We are so forward with our Approaches as to have reason to expect we shall be able to carry the place in a very few Days.” The following day in a letter to Gervais he said, “I hope my next will Congratulate you on the Reduction of Savannah.” He continued to be optimistic although that event remained as remote as ever. “A few Days I am hopeful will put us in Possession of [the] Town,” Clay was writing three weeks after the arrival of the Allies before Savannah.¹²

All this suited the British. Had not the great Moncrief assured them that ‘‘if the Allied army would once resort to the spade, he would pledge himself for the success of the defence”?