About a mile or two from where I sit the second bloodiest battle in the Revolution was fought in 1779. The Siege of Savannah was a failed attempt to oust the British from Savannah by the Whigs (American independence fighters) and French forces led by d’Estaing. The attack consisted of French subjects from what is now Haiti, France and Arthur Dillon’s “Wild Geese”, Irish Jacobites who fled Ireland to France. The British, aided by Hessians and Loyalists, defeated the Revolutionary forces, killing more than 1100 men including the Pole Casimir Pulaski, the father of the American Calvary. 650 French were killed. Not only was French active participation crucial to the success of the Revolution, but their passive presence in the Caribbean kept British forces from concentrating forces in the colonies for fear that the French would seize the British possessions in the Caribbean.
