Old Bullet Head Marches on Savannah

British Major General Augustine Prevost 1723-1786.

By Peter Hill

The American Revolution famously started with shots heard round the world at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on the 19th of April 1775. It ended less famously with the remorse of Torie colonists as the last of them evacuated Amelia Island, East Florida on the 19th of November 1785. Staunch British resolve to hold on to their colonies had been on display as Redcoats marched out from Boston that spring morning. However, by that autumn day a decade later, British resolve had been thoroughly exhausted by civil war. Over 1% of the total colonial populations had died from the fighting, much of it in the South. Tories had lost more than 7,000 men fighting for the King, and upwards of 60,000 Loyalists had already fled to other parts of the British Empire. The British Governor of East Florida, Patrick Tonyn, ordered by King George the Third to be the last man to leave Florida, herded dispossessed planters and their families down from a settlement on the northern bluffs of Amelia to transport ships riding on currents of the deep roadstead below the town. The long, bloody American Revolution finally came to an end.

A Chart of the Entrance into the Saint Mary’s River taken by Captain W. Fuller in November 1769.

Such a bitter conclusion to British America’s story seemed unthinkable in the winter of 1778-79. American Patriot attempts to capture East Florida from the British had been turned back both on Amelia Island and at Howard Creek in May of 1777, and again at Alligator Creek Bridge in June of 1778. There simply was little support for American Independence in either East or West Florida, and there would be no further Patriot attempts to capture them after the skirmish at Alligator Creek Bridge because the British were by then threatening Savannah, the capital of Georgia. The attack on Savannah was the opening gambit of a British Southern Strategy the objective of which was to separate Georgia and the Carolinas from the other colonies the British deemed unlikely recoverable. General Augustine Prevost, known as Old Bullet Head to his troops because of a large battle scar to his forehead, was ordered to march his Florida raised regiments up the old King’s Road across the Saint Marys River into Georgia to support the offensive.

Prevost arrived too late. Savannah had already fallen on December 29th to 3,000 British regulars sent down from New York lead by Scotsman, Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell. An escaped slave, Quamino Dolly, led the British along a secret trail through a swamp into the Patriots’ rear. Cut off from retreat; the already outnumbered Patriots were routed, and a substantial number captured. After being given overall command in Savannah after his arrival in January of 1779, General Prevost also moved against Georgia’s new Patriot capital, Augusta, and into South Carolina. Prevost later recalled his troops to defend Savannah against a strong Franco-American force led by French Count de Estaing.

Circa 1776 French Infantry & Marine reenactors. Photo by Peter B. Hill

Prevost’s Florida men and others prepared defensive redoubts. Although outnumbered, they successfully drove off a poorly coordinated allied attack on October 9th in which Casimer Pulaski, known as the father of American Cavalry, was killed. Notable among the French forces was Charles Pierre L’Enfant who, though left for dead on the battlefield, would recover, and at George Washinton’s request, create the classical revival style of early architecture for Washington, D.C.

Battle diorama and British uniforms at the Savannah History Museum. Photos by Peter B. Hill.

The French military also fielded a regiment from its wealthiest Caribbean colony, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), known as the Chasseurs-Volontaires. Composed of free men of color, these soldiers fought bravely and sustained heavy casualties in America’s cause, notably covering the retreat of allied forces during the siege. Veterans of this regiment later formed a crucial core of experienced officers who helped lead the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791. Their leadership ultimately culminated in defeating the French and declaring independence on January 1, 1804, making Haiti only the second republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States.

Monument to the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Dominique in Savannah.

Augustine Provost had asked to be relieved of command prior to the allied siege of Savanah due to his advanced age. However, he was retained in the commanding role because his designated replacement had been captured by the Patriots while enroute to Savannah! In 1780, Prevost was granted his request to retire. He lived on in England until his death in 1786, long enough to learn the end of Britain’s hold over America. Some of Prevost’s redouts are viewable to this day outside the Savannah History Museum. Prevost’s’ younger brother, Mark, who had been so valiant in the British victories at Howard Creek and Alligator Creek Bridge continued campaigning. Briefly designated the British Governor of Georgia, the only American Colony to be retaken during the war, Mark eventually died from old wounds in Jamaica in 1781. This left his Patriot loving wife and mother of their five children, Theodosia Bartow Prevost, free to marry Aaron Burr in Philadelphia! Burr, while serving as Vice President of the United States, notoriously killed Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s key aide and father of numerous Federalist Papers, in a dual in 1804.


Theodosia Bartow Prevost Burr and Aaron Burr.

In the spring of 1780, a bolstered British Army of nearly 13000 commanded by Sir Henry Clinton went on to capture Charleston, the richest city in the South taking 5,500 prisoners. Because of strong Loyalist and Patriot sympathies, the war devolved into fierce vigilantism. British infantry dominated set piece battles where Continental Soldiers were no match for the disciplined Redcoats, Europe’s queen of battles since era of the Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill’s great ancestor, at the dawn of the 18th Century.

Circa 1776 Hessian and British infantry reenactors advance inline. Photo by Peter B. Hill.

Put in charge of American hopes in August of 1780 after another disastrous rout at Camden, South Carolina, General Nathaniel Greene followed Washington’s Fabian strategy of engaging, losing, retreating but never allowing his army to be placed in a position where it could be destroyed completely. We fight, we get beat, we get up and fight again paraphrases Greene’s dispatch to Washington. So long as the Continental army remained largely intact, local militia would rally to the cause and harass British forces attempting to forage off Patriot lands. South Carolinian hero Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, and other mounted partisans relentlessly severed inland supply lines. This disruption ultimately crippled British forces’ deep-country campaigns, forcing them to retreat toward the coast, where they had to rely on the Royal Navy for survival.

Circa 1776 mounted American Cavalry. Photo by Peter B. Hill.

When the British ventured too far inland such as at Kings Mountain, North Carolina, they were often subject to crushing defeat. By 1781, even British victories came at increasing cost. At the Battle of Guilford Court House on March 15th, the British commander, Lord Cornwallis, had to order his cannons to open fire on Patriot and British soldiers alike to break up a melee that threatened to destroy his smaller army. American Continental troops, led by the First Maryland Regiment’s fierce bayonet charge, demonstrated there that day that they were learning the brutal art of linear warfare.

Battle of Guilford Court House by H. Charles McBarron Jr., 1992.

Undeterred, Cornwallis marched his diminished army into Virginia linking up with some forces operating there before veering towards Yorktown on the Chesapeake for resupply by sea and a possible evacuation should it become necessary.

It was at this juncture the French played a critical role. Their commander, General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, convinced Washington to temporarily suspend the American’s now desultory siege of New York City, and to quietly march their combined armies of 20,000 soldiers to Virginia to trap Cornwallis. Rochambeau warned Washington that the French Army and Navy if not meaningfully engaged would be dispatched to other theaters. Use it or lose it was his advice to Washington. The hand of Providence blessed Rochambeau’s strategy when the French fleet, rarely victorious over the British in that age of sail, fought off the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Virginia Capes on September 5th, 1781, forcing it back to New York City for repairs. Cornwallis was being overtaken by forces over twice his numbers with no avenue of escape. In the dark, Patriot winter of 1776, Cornwallis had bragged that he would soon “bag the old fox” (meaning Washington). Now, he realized he himself was about to be bagged.

However, British honor demanded a defense of Yorktown. After the fall of their outer redoubts in fierce hand to hand fighting, and several days of bombardment, a British drummer appeared atop their works on the morning of October 17th beating parley while an officer held aloft a sword with a white handkerchief tied to its end. Two days later, roughly 7,000 British and Hessian soldiers laid down their weapons and were marched directly into American captivity.


Circa 1776 British and Hessian reenactors marching away. Photo by Peter Hill.

British expectations had been that Washington would accord them the full honors of war. They hoped to retain their prized battle flags, keep their arms, and be quickly paroled and sent home. This practical convention would avoid the enormous cost to the victors of feeding and guarding so many young men and providing for their camp following wives, children and lovers.

Circa 1776 reenactors of a military family at camp. Photo by Peter Hill.

Unfortunately for them, the British were denied parole because the Americans captured while defending Charleston had not been paroled or granted honors by the British. It would take a further two years before diplomats in Paris hashed out peace terms, and months more before all the Loyalists who did not wish to or were not welcome to stay left the new Republic. It was said that after the Revolution that every village in England received the dust of America. Its great imperial ambitions checked, Britain had lost not thirteen, but fifteen of her prized American colonies. Fourteen were lost through force of arms including West Florida that had been conquered in 1781 by Spanish commander Bernardo de Galvez for whom present day Galveston, Texas is named.

Bernardo de Galvez captures West Florida.

Ironically, East Florida avoided American conquest only to be traded away in the treaty of Paris of 1783. British Protestants there had successfully repelled every Patriot invasion, so they were shocked to learn their future was to be dictated to them by Catholic Spain. The Planters were given eighteen months to convert or leave. Those eighteen months would prove some of the most tumultuous in the history of Northeastern Florida.