XI

D’Estaing Decides to Attack

THE French had to do something. Supplies were running short and time shorter. At first they found pigs, turkeys, and geese “à profusion,” according to Captain Séguier de Terson, who tells us that marauding was “winked on.” Conditions had soon changed. There was no bread—only that bane of the French soldier, rice. The day after the opening of the trenches proved a memorable one for some. In order to protect the sappers the French grenadiers had lain upon their stomachs only two hundred yards from the British works throughout the whole night. As a reward to their officers d’Estaing provided a fine spread. “Beaucoup de gaieté et de plaisir” had marked the occasion. The General responded to the toasts with a little talk. It was as though the “événements facheux” of the morrow were far from everyone’s mind, said Séguier de Terson.

A rare stroke of fortune for the French occurred when they captured the Experiment, commanded by haughty Sir James Wallace. Demasted in a gale while en route from New York, she was easy prey for the vessels encountered off Hilton Head. Anne, Lady Wallace, “a young lady of great beauty and merit” who had recently become the bride of this forty-eight-year-old English sea captain, was a passenger. She was the daughter of Governor Wright. Also aboard the vessel was General George Garth, “the hero of Fairfield” as the Charlestown press dubbed the destroyer of that New England town, who was on his way to Savannah to relieve Prevost. More important than prisoners was the great quantity of stores on the Experiment, including 2,200 barrels of flour, oatmeal, beef and pork, and the payroll of £30,000 sterling. Without the supplies thus obtained the troops “might have died of hunger,” said Séguier de Terson, while du Petit-Thouars of the navy could add that “the crews would have died, not only of hunger, but of cold.” The customary French confusion seems to have attended the distribution of the stores. There was much dissatisfaction. “The hapless sailors who have such just claims upon these materials have been totally forgotten,” complained a garde de marine on Bougainville’s ship.¹

It was a strange state of affairs. The besiegers were in want while the besieged had supplies for an extended resistance. There was enough flour on hand at Savannah, according to British commissary records, to supply six thousand men until January 25th; sufficient beef and pork to last until March 25th; and enough rice and oatmeal to supply the town through March 13th.² Moreover, hundreds of cattle had been driven into Savannah before the Allies invested the place.

The French were worn out with manning trenches day and night. Violent thunder storms made life miserable for those on duty in the lines. The Georgia climate was “so extraordinary,” complained Meyronnet de Saint-Marc, “that during the day we were exposed to the most intense heat and at night to bitter cold.” Major John Faucheraud Grimké of Charlestown soon needed his “blue great Coat with a Crimson Cape” which he had misplaced around the camp and for which he was glad to offer a thirty dollar reward.³ Such articles were in demand. The troops from the Windward Islands had come away with only linen uniforms. They were not so fortunate as some of the Americans. The “very cold weather’’ had given John Jones a “great cold’’ and a “small touch of the Gout’’ but at least the Sunbury officer could write to his wife to ask that Ishmael be sent to him with a pair of “thick Breeches’’ and “my Blue Coat with 3 ruffle shirts,” wishing that his Polly had “tho’t to send me a bottle of Ginn.”⁴ Poor Major Jones! For such things he would have no use in a few days.

It was not the kind of warfare some of the Frenchmen were to see later in the more civilized North, where the Comte de Truguet, d’Estaing’s youthful trouble-shooter in Georgia, could do “honor to the French nation” at Boston by his “graceful and easy performance” of the minuet or where the Vicomte de Noailles could fascinate the young gentry of Philadelphia with his violin playing. There were no minuets at Savannah and the only music the French heard there was the strains of the weird pibrochs of the Highlands that drifted across the lines from the camp of the Scotch.

Back on the ships things were in a terrible state. Even the animals refused the two-year-old bread. “Provisions from Charlestown come extremely slow and in small amounts,” complained de Borda, d’Estaing’s righthand man on the Languedoc. They consisted mainly of rice, a resource which “lack of water and of pots for cooking renders almost useless to the fleet,” Count d’Estaing informed General Lincoln. There was much sickness and little medicine. Thirty to thirty-five dead were being thrown overboard every day. The sailors cursed the Vice-Admiral in their dying breath.

Beneath the veneer of polite protestations of esteem and attachment which Count d’Estaing’s naval officers expressed in the reports they sent him while he was ashore there was bitter talk on the French ships. The feeling against the Admiral is reflected in the Memoirs of du Petit-Thouars. “Picture to yourself,” reminisced that young naval officer, “a squadron of twenty vessels anchored off an open coast, in the stormy season, lacking supplies and anchors; their holds filled with the sick who had almost no hope of fresh provisions while those on land were surfeited.” “Imaginez-vous” he continued on the subject of the sailors, “that M. d’Estaing in bringing them to the isles had forbidden them to take along anything more than a canvas coat and two shirts.”

As the Siege wore on Bougainville became fit to be tied. “The ambitious vice-admiral,” he complained on September 27th, “is advised of the condition of the men and the ships but he seems to have absolutely no regard for them. Of all the scourges which plague the poor human race an ambitious master of its fate is the worst.” “Quelle barbarie!” he exclaimed, describing himself as “vox clamantis in deserto .” A hundred times he had protested to de Broves. The reply was always the same—“Write to Count d’Estaing.” Near the end Bougainville was recommending that all the captains send a memorial concerning the true situation of the fleet to their “pitiless commander.”⁵

Bougainville’s sentiments were echoed by one of the cadets on the Guerrier. Several soldiers of the Foix Regiment were hospitalized there, suffering from eye trouble. They could see only in the daytime—being the “victims,” the young diarist said, “of the boundless ambition of a man who cares nothing whatever about being the cause of so much unhappiness as long as it advances his own ends.” “What will be the outcome of it all?” he wondered.

From his ship Bougainville could hear the distant thunder of cannon at Savannah. In his capacity as brigadier general (a rank he still held in the army) d’Estaing might well have given him a command on land. Had not the Count informed General Washington the year before that he had the “greatest confidence” in M. de Bougainville “as regards military science”? When these favored young courtiers of his commander-in-chief were mere children he had been the right arm of the great Montcalm whose sword he now proudly wore!

Perhaps it was just as well, however, that he was not in the field. The usually cheery countenance of the captain of the Guerrier was sometimes drawn in pain, his dyspepsia so bad at times that he could partake only of milled chocolate. He was weary of sun and squall and the endless heaving and rolling of an anchored ship. His gay manner was gone. The presence in d’Estaing’s fleet of Bougainville’s famous frigate, the Boudeuse, only served to recall to him his epic days aboard her in the Pacific.

This lonely coast was enough to drive a man crazy. Queer things happened here, things which made a person think he was out of his mind at times. There was the day a large sea fowl lit on a spar of the Magnifique and was caught by a seaman. Someone happened to notice a swelling on the bird’s neck. They looked closer. A message written in English was hung there. It read, “The brigantine which cruises to the windward of the fleet is the privateer Robuste.” “Ce fait est extraordinaire mais très vrai” [“Extraordinary but quite true”], wrote M. de Bougainville, glad to have something to record in his Journal besides imprecations against the Vice-Admiral.

Count d’Estaing had informed the Americans upon his arrival in these waters that from the viewpoint of his country’s interests in the West Indies he would be a “criminal” if he kept his troops on land longer than eight days. They had already been ashore three weeks. The French had come while summer was in the land—when they left the geese would be honking as they winged southward in the chill night. “Ce siège éternel,” they called it in the navy.

If Admiral Byron should follow the French up from the West Indies d’Estaing’s under-manned ships would prove so many lame ducks. Incensed at the requisition of some of the Guerrier’s best cannoneers and his 18 pounders for use in the Siege, Bougainville swore “before God and men that I will not make myself answerable for her.” Worse danger still, a hurricane might destroy the fleet at any moment now. It was the season when the great twisters came howling up in blind fury from their Caribbean lair. As early as September 9th Prevost had predicted to Sir Henry Clinton that “The French cannot, I should think, venture to continue long in their present exposed Situation, on this coast, at this Season of the year.” Their ships had now been anchored for over a month where “an English squadron,” as the French were informed, “had never dared to remain for eight hours even in the most beautiful weather.” The storm which caught the fleet on the way north on September 2nd had crippled many of the vessels. The French were short of cables, tackle, and anchors. Much of the time off Georgia was spent installing temporary rudders. The Magnifique was only so in name. She had sprung a bad leak, its nature being such as to make the Vice-Admiral suspect sabotage by an evil-disposed calker. A merchant vessel had to be stayed against her and the pumps kept going night and day. For a time it was feared the big ship could not be saved.

Though by now what d’Estaing called the “beau moment” of the usual siege had arrived, that is to say, the point where success was imminent, the situation at Savannah was altogether different. For this was no ordinary siege. Despite all their labors they had “achieved nothing,” said the Count who pointed out that “New entrenchments rise while the old are neither abandoned nor taken.” If the Allies were to capture a work, their position would be scarcely improved. They would only have new obstacles to face in the way of entrenchments further to the rear. “This strange Siege,” said d’Estaing, “is a Penelope’s web.”

To call everything off and sail away was the part of discretion. But French honour was not to be thus satisfied. A last desperate effort must be made to take the city. The moment was now arrived that Count d’Estaing had described in a letter to the Chevalier Durumain three weeks before. After other resources have failed in war, he said, one must “take sword in hand.” “L’épée à la main.” How he loved that phrase! A true grenadier of His Majesty the King, that is what he was at heart.

D’Estaing possessed decided ideas as to where the main assault should be launched. Deserters had informed the French that “the right of the enemy works facing the American camp was guarded only by militia.”⁶ As the Count summed up the situation in his Notes, the area near the Spring Hill redoubt (which he had personally reconnoitered) was “the least fortified, the one where we are least perceived in advance by the enemy and the preferable one for an attack in force.”

The British themselves recognized that the weakest point in their line was on the right flank, especially at the salient made by the redoubt atop Spring Hill adjacent to the road to Augusta. Here despite all his military engineers could do the terrain, said Prevost, was “favorable to our enemy.” The marshy gorge or hollow west of the high land afforded the Allies an opportunity to approach undetected within a short distance of the works. At the same time the redoubt was far enough away from the marsh, d’Estaing had observed, to permit several columns of troops to pass between them in order to attack further along the British right flank toward the river. “The horses which we saw go out and graze between the entrenchments and the marsh appeared to enter and leave the city without trouble and without having any ditch to cross,” wrote the Count who likewise noted that when the enemy came out from their entrenchments and walked along the road they never disappeared from view. It was here M. d’Estaing would strike—at the head of his troops.

Colonel Maitland had been honored with the command of this critical sector. Colonel von Porbeck of the Hessians was field officer on this flank. Among the regular British officers in this portion of the line was Major Beamsley Glasier of the Sixtieth Regiment. Lieutenant Thomas Tawse of the Seventy-first (“to whose sacred Memory, while my Recollection of his unequalled Merit lives,” a Britisher was soon to promise, “I’ll pay an anniversary Tribute”) commanded some Carolina troops assigned to the redoubt. Commanding the King’s Rangers was Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Browne, “a Gentleman of family and of liberal and genteel education . . . having considerable patrimony,” according to Governor Tonyn of Florida. Because he once expressed his views about the rebellion too freely the liberty-loving citizenry of Augusta had outfitted him with “a genteel and fashionable suit of tar and feathers,” to use the words of the Georgia Gazette. He had vowed and obtained terrible vengeance upon the Whigs. Ninety North Carolina Volunteers were also assigned to this area. These sharpshooting provincial troops presented a fire power fully equal to the British regulars. They were part of the 1,400 troops a popular and wealthy North Carolina merchant named John Hamilton had raised and equipped at his own expense. This rotund, red-faced Tory Colonel, a veteran of Culloden, was himself stationed elsewhere in the lines.

The decision to attack as well as the point selected introduced the usual dissension in the French camp. The Council of War seems to have been itself a small war. There was a Babel of dissent. “Emphatic remonstrances” were made by Colonel de Noailles against attacking where it was “impracticable.”⁷ Colonel Stedingk said that he “confidently predicted” the outcome. He argued that the difficulties of the terrain “quite counter-balanced” the weakness of the works at the point selected for the attack. Instead of leading a column, as d’Estaing ordered, Baron Stedingk “entreated” the General “to let me march with a musket, a volunteer at his side.” Colonel de Pondevaux expressed the opinion that “une Sage retraite” was the only course, a view in which Dillon and several other French officers concurred. Major Thomas Browne of the Dillon Regiment, who had reconnoitered the British lines, disapproved of the attack, reported Meyronnet de Saint-Marc, maintaining that it was impossible to take Savannah without at least five thousand picked men.

In short, to use the words of a cadet on the Guerrier, “tout le monde s’étoit opposé à cette funeste attaque.” That is to say, everybody was opposed to it except d’Estaing. As usual, the Count cut short those who crossed him. When Colonel de Noailles voiced his objections d’Estaing curtly answered that “his conclusions were those of an old man.” “The General would see him go under fire like a young man,” replied the Vicomte spiritedly, adding that “from the observations which he had made together with officers whose experience was well known, they all regarded the attack as impracticable, and that they were astonished that the point of attack was not decided by the place where the trenches had been opened.”⁸

“Fidelity to the Americans” and “the honor of the King’s arms,” replied the Count, demanded that he “not raise the siege ignominiously, without striking a vigorous blow.” “Son parti était pris” [“his decision was made”]. “It was necessary,” Meyronnet de Saint-Marc recorded him as saying, “to finish this business with the capture of Savannah.” True, confessed d’Estaing, he foresaw “a multitude of obstades.” “But extreme bravery,” he added, “can conquer everything, and I thought that the time was ripe to prove to the Americans by a brilliant action, although it might be a bloody one, that the King’s troops knew how to dare everything for them.”⁹

He was going to make the attempt “sauter le bâton,” the French commander told Baron Stedingk—that is to say, as a matter of necessary routine, like a monkey jumps a stick. The Count possessed a strong sense of self-righteousness. The role of martyr to the American cause was one in which he frequently cast himself. Abuse by the Americans, he reported, had “in no way diminished my zeal for the King’s allies.” “They have greatly mistreated me,” said d’Estaing, “without being able to change my way of thinking of them” though ’twas true he had become “a little mistrustful.”¹⁰

It was useless to argue with Monsieur le Comte. “He wishes everyone,” said a French naval officer, “to view and think of his plans as he does.” Neither in his capacity as admiral nor as general was d’Estaing accustomed to solicit or to accept advice. “His haughty and vain character,” continued the author of the Journal d’un officier de la marine, “did not admit of advice . . . with his authority always silencing whoever objected. . . . He needs counsel but his prejudices and his headstrong nature prevent his following it or even listening to those capable of guiding him.” “In one word,” added this officer, d’Estaing “conducted his squadron like a true despot, by fear; and succeeded only in causing general revolt and in making himself hated.”¹¹

General Lincoln acquiesced in the plan of assault. There was not much else one could do. D’Estaing was his superior in rank. Besides, the French army was operating only as a voluntary force. It was the “pisaller” [”last resort”], explained French-speaking Major Thomas Pinckney. The plan had been agreed on in principle between the two commanders several days before. The National Archives at Paris contain the original memorandum of their understanding on the subject. It called for an attack “on the night of the 6th or 7th” which was to be centered upon the Spring Hill redoubt, the hour and details to be worked out later. The projected assault was to be made by two columns of French soldiers, consisting of 1,100 and 1,200 men respectively, with 1,000 picked troops constituting the reserve.¹²

If there was disagreement by the Americans as to the locale of attack there is no record of the fact. Possibly Pulaski dissented. On the 6th he presented a written proposal to d’Estaing on the subject of the assault. “The liberty which I take of communicating to you my way of thinking about the attack is authorized,” he said, “by the conduct of all great men who, as homage due, receive the advice of others.” “Above all else,” he said, my “purpose is to please you.” In his memorandum General Pulaski proposed three separate points of attack, apologizing for the fact that he “expressed himself with reference to the terrain in terms of the little information I have obtained from the Americans.” One assault was to be on the British right flank along the Augusta road; another, on the enemy left wing, was to be made by the Americans under General McIntosh while the main attack would be launched near the right center of the British line. “You will always remember,” wrote Pulaski in transmitting these suggestions, “that I wished to be good for something in addition to the dutiful attachment with which I have the honor of being your Excellency’s very humble and very obedient servant.”¹³

Some of the Americans had a foreboding of disaster. Major John Jones and Lieutenant Robert Carnabie Baillie “staggered” their friends, said James Jackson, by bidding them an affectionate farewell, each certain he would not survive.

General Pulaski possessed a marked tendency toward melancholia. He, too, anticipated death, regarding as an ill-omen the loss of the scapulars that had been blessed by his Church. His last days were not happy. Only the shock of battle seemed to satisfy him. Service with the Americans was irksome. On one occasion during the latter part of the Siege his cavalry had failed to come up promptly on the occasion of an alarm. There had been criticism. Quite sensitive to it, Pulaski sat down and wrote to d’Estaing in French by way of justification. “I desire to measure up to everything,” he said, “that is able to please you. Yesterday an American officer commanded the picket. His accustomed laziness caused me the displeasure of learning that, contrary to my orders, he did not occupy his post at the hour . . .” Pulaski had lost one of his cavalrymen to the enemy and apparently had been blamed for it. “I have studied my calling for 18 years and would blush to commit a fault,” he wrote, “that would have cost the life of a man. I suffer, however, to hear that several [officers] younger than I am amuse themselves by expressing an unfavorable opinion of me.” “I serve in the American army with the view of pleasing France,” added the brooding Casimir. “I left my native land expecting to find an asylum in that kingdom. In passing to Turkey I obtained the recommendations of the Duke de Guiton. My prospects were flattering. Change of circumstances has not changed my heart. If your Excellency wishes proof of it, give me the opportunity and I will profit by it, I hope, to merit your approbation. . . .”¹⁴

Under the plan adopted there were to be two main columns of French troops with a vanguard of 250 grenadiers under Colonel de Béthisy. The vanguard was to seize Spring Hill redoubt while the two columns passed between the marsh and the redoubt in order to assail the entrenchments and battery immediately to its north. The right column, commanded by Colonel Dillon with Major Browne as second officer, was to strike at the entrenchments and battery while the left under Colonel Stedingk was to attack further on the enemy right, marching parallel with the defenses to the end of the abatis before turning. The French reserve was placed under the command of Colonel de Noailles. The American Light Infantry and the Charlestown militia, with Colonel Laurens at the head, were to comprise the first American column, which was to be followed by a second, consisting of the First and Fifth Carolina Regiments under General McIntosh. They were to follow the French left column. The cavalry under Pulaski was to endeavor to reach Yamacraw by penetrating between the battery and the redoubt nearest the river. Feints or false attacks were to be launched by the French at the center and by the Americans on the British left. An amphibious assault was to be made from the Savannah River. At the latest the attack was to begin at four o’clock.

In the Journal of Johann Hinrichs this plan was criticized at some length, the Hessian officer pointing out many things that should have or should not have been done. Hinrichs had not seen the plan of attack when he wrote his critique. Actually it embraced most of his suggestions. On paper at least, the plan was carefully worked out. Success depended on co-ordination, timing, and above all upon surprise. “To take them by surprise was the main point,” declared d’Estaing. “In my eyes everything depended on that.”¹⁵

There was to be no surprise. One source informs us that a spy stood outside the tent where these plans were being laid. It is claimed that a member of the Grenadier Company of militia posed as a musket-bearing sentinel at the entrance to the marquee. Later he would disappear in the direction of the British lines. This Charlestown clerk would not, however, disappear entirely from history, for Sergeant Major Curry will be seen again—hanging to a tree after his capture by the Americans at the Battle of Hobkirk. So the story goes, though the past offers little in the way of proof that it was James Curry who betrayed the Allies at Savannah.¹⁶ A furtive, half-mythical figure of the Revolution, he lurks in the deep shadows between tradition and history.

But if it was not Curry, certainly someone else had revealed the Allied plans. D’Estaing himself was less inclined to blame the leak upon “two American deserters” than upon “des gens de cette nation” [“American civilians”] who he said kept the British informed of everything. The many Tories among their militia “continually betrayed us,” claimed Meyronnet de Saint-Marc, “rendering to the English the most exact account of all our operations.” Some of the American militia, he said, even passed the evenings in Savannah, returning by day to the Rebel camp. General Lincoln and his principal officers saw without being able to prevent carryings-on “so dangerous for the common cause.” Such was the price, continued this Frenchman, of civil war and divided public opinion.

One may readily sympathize with the French in this respect. Not a few of the American militia seem to have come to Savannah with mental reservations like Sir Patrick Houstoun. Of course, there is no suggestion that this brother of Governor Houstoun betrayed the Americans. But he was hardly the stuff of which patriots are made. Justifying later to the Royal Council his presence among the Rebel militia at Savannah, Patrick contended that he had “received peremptory Orders to go down with the Army.” He “carried no Arms, except Pistols, which he generally rode with.” In fact, he was so generally looked upon as a Tory that Americans “had been severely questioned and treated for going to dine with him.”¹⁷ Soldiers such as Sir Patrick Houstoun, Sixth Baronet, were scarcely the materials with which revolutions are won.

Officially the British nowhere admitted any American treachery. But they freely told the French afterward (though Meyronnet de Saint-Marc suspected an effort to create friction among the Allies) that “they knew from one minute to the next all that went on in our camp” and “learned the night before of our principal point of attack and as a result awaited us there with all their forces.”

But on the other hand, statements of General Prevost and his aide, Major Moore, imply that although they knew the day the attack was coming they were not sure of its locale. Moore wrote later that when the assault began it was not realized at first where it was centered, while Prevost supposed the French were going to attack on the English left and the Americans on his right.