The allied diversionary attacks failed. D’Estaing and Lincoln would have to carry the Spring Hill Redoubt with no support. D’Estaing considered canceling the attack, but his pride prevented him from showing hesitation in front of the Americans. My indecision, he said, would have made me a laughingstock. He ordered the attack to commence.

Surging forward with a cry of Vive le Roi! the French vanguard advanced on Spring Hill Redoubt at the double quick. The British and Loyalist troops in the fort opened up on them with a vicious cross-fire of muskets and cannons. The white-coated grenadiers cleared the abatis in front of the fort; then in the smoke and fog and under heavy fire, they thrust their way up the parapet. But the supporting French column was slow in following them. By the time they arrived to reinforce the vanguard, enemy fire had driven the grenadiers back.

Leading his troops forward, d’Estaing was wounded in the arm just before he reached the redoubt. The fighting became intense. The attackers were sprayed with musket fire and grapeshot–pieces of scrap iron, nails, bolts, steel blades, and chain. Fire also came from a British galley in the river. A British soldier at one of the guns said, Believe me, I never was happier in my Life than upon this Occasion.

D’Estaing’s troops were thrown back on the second French assault column led by Stedingk. The columns became entangled, lost formation, and were cast into utter confusion, as one French officer wrote. Stedingk’s column was shoved back into the swampy ground on the French left, where more than half were killed or left stuck fast in the mud. Those who lost only their shoes, another officer said, were the most fortunate.

D’Estaing urged his troops forward, crying, Advance, my brave grenadiers, kill the wretches while British and Loyalist troops from the redoubt bellowed, Kill the rascal French dogs, and God save the King!

For a moment the sheer fury and determination of the French attack nearly overwhelmed the defenders, and the French managed to raise their flag over the parapet. Stedingk later wrote: My doubts were all gone. I believed the day was our own.

But the defenders were determined, too. Despite three brave assaults on the fort, the French could not stand up to their firepower, and d’Estaing reluctantly ordered a retreat. As the French fell back, British troops rose up from the parapet and delivered a point-blank volley. D’Estaing was wounded for a second time, in the thigh, and was nearly left for dead.

Continental light infantry under John Laurens, former aide to General George Washington, now arrived, and then the second column under Lachlan McIntosh, whose wife and children were in Savannah. McIntosh already had weathered a political storm after killing his rival, Button Gwinnett, in a duel.

The Patriots arrived near the Spring Hill Redoubt at the height of the battle’s confusion, as the wounded d’Estaing tried to re-form his troops. McIntosh’s troops, thrust far to the left in the swamp, were exposed to British naval fire from the river, as well as heavy grapeshot from the fort. Major John Jones, the General’s aide, was within paces of an enemy cannon embrasure when he was cut in two by a cannon shot. McIntosh was driven back under heavy enemy fire in the allied retreat.

Continentals of the 2nd South Carolina, led by the future partisan hero Francis Marion, succeeded in reaching the redoubt; in brutal hand-to-hand combat on the parapet Captain Tawse, the Loyalist commander, died after striking down three of the attackers with his sword.

Sergeant William Jasper placed the 2nd South Carolina’s colors on the ramparts but was shot down. Jasper already was a hero because of his actions in 1776 at Fort Sullivan near Charleston, where he raised his regiment’s flag in defiance of the British naval assault. Now, as he lay dying, he passed the colors to Lieutenant John Bush, who also fell.

As fighting raged for control of the parapet, Maitland committed his reserves. British marines and grenadiers launched a devastating bayonet charge that drove the attackers back from the ramparts and into the ditch below. Allied assault troops, helpless and exposed to deadly musket and artillery cross-fire, were butchered in the ditch. The moment of retreat, Stedingk wrote, with the cries of our dying comrades piercing my heart was the bitterest of my life. A British officer described the scene: Their assault was a furious as ever I saw; The Ditch was choke full of their Dead.

Full daylight now revealed dead and dying French and American soldiers, many of them impaled on the abatis, for 50 yards in front of the ditch. Mangled grapeshot victims littered the field for 100 yards beyond. At the sight of them, John Laurens threw down his sword in disgust.

While the desperate allied gamble played itself out in the bloody ditch in front of Spring Hill, Brig. Gen. Kazimierz Pulaski, with the rebel cavalry, led a bold but reckless attempt to breach the British lines between the redoubts. Riding at the head of his 200 horsemen, Pulaski reached the abatis but was struck down by enemy canister fire. Exposed to deadly fire and demoralized by the loss of Pulaski, the allied cavalry withdrew in confusion. The attempt to capture Savannah was over.

The contest lasted less than an hour. When it was apparent even to d’Estaing and Lincoln that it was useless to continue, they withdrew their devastated troops and counted losses.

The two sides observed a four-hour truce to collect and bury the dead and to retrieve the wounded. The French listed 151 killed and 370 wounded, while the Patriots lost 231 killed and wounded, nearly all Continentals. British losses were only 18 killed and 39 wounded. For the allies, Savannah was the bloodiest battle of the war, a Bunker Hill in reverse.

Once more, d’Estaing fell back on siege operations. But his officers warned him that further delay in the face of possible hurricanes off the Georgia coast might jeopardize the fleet.

Squabbling between the allies soon set in. A French naval lieutenant described the Savannah operation as an ill-conceived enterprise without anything in it for France, while a young French artillery officer blamed the Patriots for the defeat at Spring Hill Redoubt. The rout began with the rebels, he wrote, they took flight first…like a crowd leaving church. D’Estaing blamed Lincoln, saying the rebels promised much and delivered little. Lincoln criticized the count for not taking Savannah when he first had the chance.

Over Lincoln’s objections, d’Estaing reluctantly prepared to pull out. He marched his troops back to the French ships, loaded his guns and equipment aboard, and set sail for France, dispatching some of the ships to the West Indies.

One of his officers described d’Estaing as A true grenadier in this affair but a poor general….It is not the fault of the troops that Savannah was not taken, but rather of those who commanded us. The count, who wrote both prose and poetry, was intelligent, courageous and bold. He also was arrogant, ambitious and, in the words of another officer, covetous of glory. Before being executed in 1794 during the French Revolution, he said, When you cut off my head, send it to the English, they will pay you well for it!

The siege was over. On October 19, the last of Lincoln’s weary and disillusioned rebel troops withdrew to Charleston.

Maitland, the old Scottish warrior who worked so hard to defend Savannah, died on October 26. Three days later, Governor Wright proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the British victory.

A golden opportunity to retake Savannah and alter the course of the war had been lost. Two more devastating defeats for the Patriots lay ahead. On May 12, 1780, British forces captured Lincoln’s entire army of 5,400 at Charleston; and on August 16, 1780, General Horatio Gates’ entire American army of 3,000 was destroyed at Camden, S.C. Georgia remained in British hands until the end of the war; and Savannah was not reoccupied by the Patriots until the British withdrew in 1782.

Two years after the Allied debacle at Savannah, a fresh opportunity for a Franco-American operation presented itself. General George Washington’s Continentals, in cooperation with French regulars under Count Rochambeau and the French fleet under Admiral DeGrasse, besieged General Charles Cornwallis’ British army at Yorktown, Va. This time there were more favorable battle conditions, better coordination, and wiser command decisions. On October 19, 1781, exactly two years after the rebel withdrawal from Savannah, Yorktown’s 8,000-man British garrison surrendered. Benjamin Lincoln was given the honor of accepting the defeated British general’s sword.

The defeat at Yorktown prompted Britain to open peace talks with the American rebels, and in early 1783 the Treaty of Paris recognized the United States as an independent nation.

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This article was written by Thomas G. Rodgers and originally published in the March 1997 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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