Savannah

Britain bet the war could be won from the bottom up, in a South it believed was thick with Loyalists, and took Savannah almost for free the winter before. Then a French battle fleet appeared off Georgia, racing the hurricane season with sick crews and orders to sail home, and the most diverse army of the war came ashore to take the town back, on a clock that would force every decision that followed.

D'Estaing summoned the town in the name of the King of France, and Prevost asked for a day to consider it. In that day the British dug, and a relief column waded the coastal creeks from Beaufort to make the garrison whole. When the siege guns finally spoke they smashed houses without denting the earthworks, and the clock left one play: a dawn storm of the Spring Hill redoubt. A deserter carried the plan across the lines.

Fog, a betrayed plan, the columns tangled in the swamp, and the attack dying on the abatis: Pulaski dead, Jasper mortally wounded with the colors, d'Estaing twice hit, about five allied men down for every defender. The reserve covered the broken army's withdrawal, the fleet sailed, the South stayed British, and the men of Saint-Domingue went home to a revolution of their own.