Siege of Savannah The Siege of Savannah or the Second Battle of Savannah was an encounter of the American Revolutionary War in 1779 . The year before , the city of Savannah , Georgia , had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutenant - Colonel Archibald Campbell . The siege itself consisted of a joint Franco - American attempt to retake Savannah from September 16 to October 18 , 1779 . On October 9 a major assault against the British siege works failed . During the attack , Polish nobleman , Kazimierz Pułaski , fighting on the American side , was mortally wounded . With the failure of the so - called joint American - French attack , the siege failed , and the British remained in control of Savannah until July 1782 , near the end of the war . In 1779 , more than 500 Haitian volunteers from Saint - Domingue , Haiti under the command of Comte d ' Estaing , fought alongside American colonial troops against the British in the Siege of Savannah , one of the most significant foreign contributions to the American Revolutionary War . Background . Following the failures of military campaigns in the northern United States earlier in the American Revolutionary War , British military planners decided to embark on a southern strategy to conquer the rebellious colonies with the support of Loyalist s in the southern states . Their first step was to gain control of the southern ports of Savannah , Georgia and Charleston , South Carolina . An expedition in December 1778 took Savannah with modest resistance from ineffective militia and Continental Army defenses . The Continental Army regrouped , and by June 1779 the combined army and militia forces guarding Charleston numbered between 5 , 000 and 7 , 000 men . General Benjamin Lincoln , commanding those forces , knew that he could not recapture Savannah without naval assistance ; for this he turned to the French , who had entered the war as an American ally in 1778 . French Admiral the Comte d ' Estaing spent the first part of 1779 in the Caribbean , where his fleet and a British fleet monitored each other ' s movements . He took advantage of conditions to capture Grenada in July before acceding to American requests for support in operations against Savannah . On September 3 , an uncharacteristically early arrival as there was still substantial risk of hurricanes , a few French ships arrived at Charleston with news that d ' Estaing was sailing for Georgia with twenty - five ships of the line and 4 , 000 French troops . Lincoln and the French emissaries agreed on a plan of attack on Savannah , and Lincoln left Charleston with over 2 , 000 men on September 11 . British defenses . British troop strength in the area consisted of about 2 , 500 regulars at Savannah , another 900 at Beaufort , South Carolina under Colonel John Maitland , and about 100 Loyalists at Sunbury , Georgia . General Augustine Prevost , in command of these troops from his base in Savannah , was caught completely off guard when the French fleet began to arrive off Savannah and recalled the troops stationed at Beaufort and Sunbury to aid in the defense of Savannah . Captain James Moncrief of the Royal Engineers was tasked with constructing fortifications to repulse the invaders . Using 200 - 300 African American slaves working up to twenty hours per day , Moncrief constructed an entrenched defensive line which included redoubt s , nearly long , on the plains outside the city . Siege . D ' Estaing began landing troops below the city on September 12 . By September 16 he was moving in on the city . Confident of victory , and believing that Maitland would be prevented from reaching Savannah by Lincoln , he offered Prevost the opportunity to surrender . Prevost temporized and asked for 24 hours of truce . Owing to miscommunication about who was responsible for preventing Maitland ' s movements , the waterways separating Hilton Head Island from the mainland were unguarded , and Maitland was able to reach Savannah hours before the truce ended . Prevost ' s response to d ' Estaing ' s offer was a polite rejection , even though Lincoln had also arrived outside the city . The French commander , rejecting the idea of assaulting the British defenses , unloaded cannons from his ships and began a bombardment of the city . The city , rather than the entrenched defenses , bore the brunt of this bombardment , which lasted from October 3 to 8 . " The appearance of the town afforded a melancholy prospect , for there was hardely a house that had not been shot through " , wrote one British observer . When the bombardment failed to have the desired effect , d ' Estaing changed his mind , and decided it was time to try an assault . He was motivated in part by the desire to finish the operation quickly , as scurvy and dysentery were becoming problems on his ships , and some of his supplies were running low . While a traditional siege operation would likely have succeeded eventually , it would have taken longer than d ' Estaing was prepared to stay . Attack . Against the advice of many of his subordinates , D ' Estaing launched the assault against the British position on the morning of October 9 . The attack depended in part on the secrecy of some its aspects , which were betrayed to Prevost well before the operations were supposed to begin around 4 : 00 am . Fog caused troops attacking the Spring Hill redoubt to get lost in the swamps , and it was nearly daylight when the attack finally got underway . The redoubt on the right side of the British works , had been chosen by the French admiral in part because he believed it to be defended only by militia . In fact , it was defended by a combination of militia and Scotsmen from Maitland ' s company , who had distinguished themselves at Stono Ferry . The militia included riflemen , who easily picked off the white - clad French troops when the assault finally got underway . Admiral d ' Estaing was twice wounded , and Polish cavalry officer Kazimierz Pułaski , fighting with the Americans , was mortally wounded . By the time the second wave arrived near the redoubt , the first wave was in complete disarray , and the trenches below the redoubt were filled with bodies . Attacks intended as feint s against other parts of the British position were easily repulsed . The second assault column was commanded by the Swedish Count Curt von Stedingk , who managed to capture the last trench . He later wrote in his journal " I had the pleasure of planting the American flag on the last trench , but the enemy renewed its attack and our people where annihilated by cross - fire " . He was however forced back by overwhelming numbers of British troops and was pushed back with only some 20 men left , all , including himself , wounded . He later wrote ; " The moment of retreat with the cries of our dying comrades piercing my heart was the bitterest of my life " . After an hour of carnage , D ' Estaing ordered the retreat . On October 17 , Lincoln and D ' Estaing abandoned the siege . Aftermath . The battle was one of the bloodiest of the war . While Prevost claimed Franco - American losses at 1 , 000 to 1 , 200 , the actual tally of 244 killed , nearly 600 wounded and 120 taken prisoner , was severe enough . British casualties were comparatively light : 40 killed , 63 wounded , and 52 missing . Sir Henry Clinton wrote , " I think that this is the greatest event that has happened the whole war " , and celebratory cannons were fired when the news reached London . It was perhaps because of the Siege ' s reputation as a famous British victory that Charles Dickens chose the Siege of Savannah as the place for Joe Willet to be wounded ( losing his arm ) in the novel Barnaby Rudge . Three currently existing Army National Guard units ( 118th FA , 131st MP and 263rd ADA ) are derived from American units that participated in the Siege of Savannah . There are only thirty current U . S . Army units with lineages that go back to the colonial era . Battlefield archaeology . In 2005 archaeologists with the Coastal Heritage Society and the LAMAR Institute discovered portions of the British fortifications at Spring Hill , the site of the brunt of the combined French and American attack on October 9 . The find represents the first tangible remains of the battlefield . In 2008 the CHS / LAMAR Institute archaeology team discovered another segment of the British fortifications in Madison Square . A detailed report of that project is available online in . pdf format from the Coastal Heritage Society website . Coastal Heritage Society archaeologists are currently finalizing a follow - up grant project in Savannah , which examined several outlying portions of the battlefield . These included the position of the Haitian reserves at the Jewish Burying Ground west of Savannah . An archaeology presentation and public meeting took place in February 2011 to find out and to offer suggestions for managing Savannah ' s Revolutionary War battlefield resources . Archaeologist Rita Elliott from the Coastal Heritage Society revealed Revolutionary War discoveries in Savannah stemming from the two " Savannah Under Fire " projects conducted from 2007 – 2011 . The projects uncovered startling discoveries , including trenches , fortifications , and battle debris . The research also showed that residents and tourists are interested in these sites . Archaeologists described the findings and explored ways to generate economic income and increase the quality of life of area residents . This event is commemorated each year by presidential proclamation on General Pulaski Memorial Day . Influence on Haitian revolutionaries . The battle is much remembered in Haitian history ; the Chasseurs - Volontaires de Saint - Domingue , consisting of over 500 " gens de couleur " - free men of color from Saint - Domingue — fought on the French side . Henri Christophe , who later became king of independent Haiti , is thought to have been among these troops . Many other less notable Haitians served in this unit and formed the officer class of the rebel armies in the Haitian Revolution , especially in the North Province around today ' s Cap - Haïtien where the unit was recruited .