Snippets from History

Siege of Savannah 1779

by Bruce Milligan

During the siege of Savannah, in 1779, Colonel Arthur Dillon, commander of the French LXXX Infanterie, offered a hundred English pounds to the first of his men who would dare to advance under fire from the British and put a fascine in the ditch in front of the British trenches.

Not a soldier moved. Much mortified, Colonel Dillon began to upbraid them for cowardice. A sergeant-major stepped for­ward. "Had you not, sir," he protested, "held out a sum of money as a temptation, your grenadiers would, one and all, have pre­sented themselves." With this, the soldiers to a man advanced. Of one hundred and ninety-four, only ninety were to return, it is said. - Alexander Lawrence, in The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes.


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