h hoped to sweep rapidly through the South, to master it up
to the borders of Virginia, and then to conquer that breeding ground of
revolution. In the spring of 1779 General Prevost marched from Georgia
into South Carolina. On the 12th of May he was before Charleston
demanding surrender. We are astonished now to read that, in response
to Prevost's demand, a proposal was made that South Carolina should be
allowed to remain neutral and that at the end of the war it should join
the victorious side. This certainly indicates a large body of opinion
which was not irreconcilable with Great Britain and seems to justify the
hope of the British that the beginnings of military success might
rally the mass of the people to their side. For the moment, however,
Charleston did not surrender. The resistance was so stiff that Prevost
had to raise the siege and go back to Savannah.

Suddenly, early in September, 1779, the French fleet under d'Estaing
appeared before Savannah. It had come from the West Indies, partly to
avoid the dreaded hurricane season of the autumn in those waters. The
British, practically without any naval defense, were confronted at
once by twenty-two French ships of the line, eleven frigates, and many
transports carrying an army. The great flotilla easily got rid of the
few British ships lying at Savannah. An American army, under General
Lincoln, marched to join d'Estaing. The French landed some three
thousand men, and the combined army numbered about six thousand. A siege
began which, it seemed, could end in only one way. Prevost, however,
with three thousand seven hundred men, nearly half of them sick, was
defiant, and on the 9th of October the combined French and American
armies made a great assault. They met with disaster. D'Estaing was
severely wounded. With losses of some nine hundred killed and wounded in
the bitter fighting the assailants drew off and soon raised the siege.
The British losses were only fifty-four. In the previous year French
and Americans fighting together had utterly failed. Now they had failed
again and there was bitter recrimination between the defeated allies.
D'Estaing sailed away and soon lost some of his ships in a violent
storm. Ill-fortune pursued him to the end. He served no more in the
war and in the Reign of Terror in Paris, in 1794, he perished on the
scaffold.

At Charleston the American General Lincoln was in command with about six
thousand men. The place, named after King Ch