They fought with Sergeant Jasper
Sergeant William Jasper of the South Carolina 2nd Regiment distinguished himself at the Battle of Sullivan’s Island on June 28, 1776 when he recovered the regiment’s colors in the face of British artillery fire. It is said that his heroic action boosted recruitment for the Patriot cause. A little over three years later he would find himself on the field of battle with a regiment of Frenchmen who had volunteered to help fight for American independence.
France had been secretly supplying the Continentals with weapons and supplies since the spring of 1776. A formal Treaty of Alliance, signed in February 1778, marked France’s official involvement in the war for American independence. King Louis XVI ordered the French military to begin assisting the war effort and, by July, Admiral Charles Henri Comte d’Estaing arrived off the American coast with a fleet of 12 ships of the line and 4,000 troops. The first operation, against Newport, Rhode Island, was a failure in part because of a hurricane that damaged some of his ships. After repairing his ships in Boston in November of 1778, he took his fleet to the Caribbean, where the French and the British had been fighting off and on for almost 100 years.
For his base of operations, d’Estaing chose the large and well protected natural harbor at Le Cap on the northern coast of Saint-Domingue (modern day Cap-Haïtien, Haiti). Saint-Domingue was part of the island of Hispaniola, discovered and claimed for Spain in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. It was the ancestral home of the Taíno people, part of the Arawak cultural group, who had occupied the island for several thousand years. The first permanent European settlement in the new world was the city of Santo Domingo established in 1496 on the northeast coast. Human bondage began immediately with the enslavement of the Taíno people. The first record of Africans brought into slavery was in 1502 and 19 years later the first recorded slave revolt in the New World occurred in Santo Domingo on the sugar plantation of Christopher Columbus’ son. In 1697, Spain officially ceded the western third of the island to France under the Treaty of Rijswijk. France renamed this territory Saint-Domingue and operated it as a highly profitable, brutal slave-based colony until Haitians won their independence in 1804.
The area around Le Cap had grown immensely wealth from the slave labor-based plantation system and was known as the Paris of the Antilles for its cultural arts and elegant colonial architecture. The population of Sante Domingue in the 1780s was about 500,000, of whom over 60% were enslaved persons mostly of African descent. However, about 20,000 were mixed race and free persons of color. Although they were not slaves and, in some cases, very wealthy, they did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship of the French planters and merchants. It was to this class of people that the French authorities would look to supply manpower for the American Revolutionary war.
The Admiral no doubt discussed the need for more troops with the Governor General of Saint-Domingue, Robert, the Comte d'Argout. For on March 12, 1779, the Governor General used the powers delegated to him by the King of France to issue an ordinance to raise a regiment of 10 companies of free persons of color to be known as the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue. He specified the troops would be paid exactly the same as the regular army. Recruiting was very successful. Expectations were exceeded by 50% and the regiment was expanded. It is believed that a few of the volunteers were enslaved men seeking an offer of manumission. Admiral d’Estaing personally took charge of finalizing the troops later that summer.
The Governor had gone to great lengths in specifying the colorful uniforms and hats of the volunteer Light Infantry. They were armed with the 0.69 caliber smoothbore Charleville musket that could mount a 15- or 17-inch triangular bayonet. The French supplied over 70,000 of these muskets during the war to the Americans. One of the things he did not have to specify was that the volunteers would not be commissioned as officers. There was a long-standing prohibition in the French army against commissioning free persons of color. Laurent François Lenoir, Marquis de Rouvray, a colonel in the French army and wealthy Saint-Domingue plantation owner, was appointed to lead the regiment.
During his operations in the Caribbean, the Admiral had received a request from a fellow Frenchman, the Marquis de Bretigny, asking that he consider placing British held Savannah under siege. The Admiral was assured that the city would fall with little difficulty. Bretigny, like the Marquis de Lafayette, had volunteered his service to the Continental Army. The Continental Congress recommended the young officer to South Carolina Governor John Rutledge who issued him a Lieutenant Colonel’s commission in the South Carolina militia with orders to form a regiment of French speaking South Carolinians. He collaborated with Continental Major General Benjamin Lincoln in Charles Town.
The French Admiral saw an opportunity to recover his reputation lost in the ill-fated East Coast operations of the previous year and began to make plans for an expedition to the coast of Georgia. In August, he loaded the Chasseurs and set sail for the 1000-mile passage to Savannah. As he neared the coast, he sent five fast ships 100 miles northeast to Charles Town to inform General Lincoln of his plans. The ships arrived in Charles Town harbor on September 3, 1779, about the same time the rest of his fleet appeared off Savannah. After discussions with Lincoln, it was determined that Lincoln would march troops overland to Savannah while d’Estaing blockaded the port and invaded from the sea. Lincoln began his march south in just over a week and reached Savannah on September 16, the same day d’Estaing demanded the surrender of the city. His request was refused and there began a formal siege. Siege operations require a lot of trench work and the Chasseurs along with other allied troops were employed in digging.
The Admiral became impatient with the progress of the siege and he and General Lincoln ordered a coordinated storming of the Spring Hill Redoubt, thought to be the weak point in the British defenses. This proved disastrous for the French and Americans with over 1000 casualties. The Chasseurs were held in reserve where they helped thwart a British counter assault and were credited with saving the regular French Army from annihilation.
The Americans fared no better. Although they actually gained the parapet of the redoubt, they were eventually repulsed - ironically by South Carolinians loyal to the British. The flag bearers for the 2nd SC Regiment managed to plant two silk flags given to the regiment by Mrs. Susannah Elliott of Charles Town after the successful repulse of the British fleet at the Battle of Sullivan’s Island on June 28, 1776. Tragically, Sergeant William Jasper, the brave Patriot, was mortally wounded trying to recover one of the silk flags that had been planted on the parapet. That flag, captured by the British, was returned after 200 years and is shared between the South Carolina State Museum and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Sgt. Jasper was buried in a mass grave in Savannah. A large memorial has been erected in his honor in Madison Square in that city.
After the defeat, Admiral d’Estaing decided to withdraw his troops and ships, leaving a company of 62 Chasseurs to escort the wounded back to Charles Town under the command of Lieutenant Louis-Antoine Magallon de Morliere. Some of the wounded Chasseurs who were evacuated by ship were captured by the British and sold into slavery in the Caribbean. In 2009, a monument to the Haitians was completed in Savannah.
Emboldened by their success at Savannah and reinforced by Vice Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot and Lieutenant General Henry Clinton out of New York, the British launched a campaign to retake Charles Town. In February and March of 1780 General Clinton and his second in command, Major General Charles Cornwallis, moved almost 12,500 troops overland while 4500 sailors of the Royal Navy effected a blockade of the port. On April 8, 1780, Admiral Arbuthnot led nine warships and three transports past Fort Moultrie, sustaining only minor damage and sealing the port. With the British fleet in the harbor and the British army laying siege to Charles Town, Fort Moultrie was useless and it would be surrendered to Arbuthnot a month later without firing a shot.
As Charles Town prepared for the inevitable, Col. Bretigny was charged with forming a unit of French speaking soldiers from French soldiers and sailors and local volunteers that was known as Bretigny’s Corps. During the Revolution corps meant any distinct command and did not have the implication of size that it gained in later wars. Lt. Louis-Antoine Magallon de Morliere and his company of Chasseurs was included in General Lincoln’s forces and helped defend the Ashley River side of the Charles Town peninsula to prevent the British from landing there. Bretigny had a palmetto wood and earthen battery erected at the present-day intersection of Lenwood Blvd and Gibbes Street which was named in his honor. The British tightened the noose around Charles Town and on April 13 began bombarding the city. After almost a month of bombardment, General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered the town and its garrison. The capture of over 5200 combatants was the largest surrender of American forces in the entire war.
Lt. Col. Bretigny managed to escape the siege and traveled to New Bern, NC where the governor made him a colonel of a cavalry detachment. He participated in the battle of Guilford Courthouse where his bravery in leading a charge against Cornwallis is recognized in a battlefield monument. The Chasseurs he left behind in Charles Town were not so fortunate. With so many prisoners of war, the treatment on prison ships and camps in Charles Town was abominable and many died of disease. The Chasseurs, being volunteers and not regular army, were not even afforded the ill treatment of a prison ship. They disappeared from the prisoner of war records. It is probable that they were deemed “prizes of war” and shipped to the Caribbean and sold into slavery. It is not known if any of the Charles Town defenders ever returned to Haiti.
If you would like additional Information on the involvement of the French in the American Revolution please see the references below:
Storm Over Savannah: The Story of Count d’Estaing and the Siege of the Town in 1779
By Alexander A. Lawrence 2021
University of Georgia Press
A Gallant Defense: The Siege of Charleston, 1780
By Carl P. Borick 2012
University of South Carolina Press
Relieve Us of This Burthen: American Prisoners of War in the Revolutionary South, 1780-1782
By Carl P. Borick 2024
University of South Carolina Press
A French Account of the Siege of Charleston, 1780
By Richard K. Murdoch
Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul., 1966), pp. 138-154
The South Carolina Historical Magazine
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