“Sir, I believe this is their target, but we will not know until after a few hours. They’ll have to deploy around the city to cut off our supplies and prevent reinforcements from joining us, and then wait for Lincoln and his Continentals before making their final demands. This will give us a few days, but the fact is that we are not prepared to repel an all-out attack.”

Prevost was an intelligent man and a shrewd tactician, who had one major decision to make.

“When the time comes, we’ll either have to fight or surrender. As you know, at this time we have less than a thousand men and the city is relatively defenseless once the marsh is penetrated. Together, d’Estaing and Lincoln can marshal more than four times our number and still leave Charles Town defended. In the meantime, we must make the best of what we have. We can begin to concentrate our artillery accordingly, but we have few entrenchments or abatis to protect these positions.”

Prevost had been talking quietly, as though to himself, but now he turned directly to Brown, and the unprecedented sense of relative familiarity vanished. He ordered abruptly, “We’ll meet in the morning at eight, and I’ll want an up-to-date report from you about the French fleet.”

Before landing his first troops, Count d’Estaing had sent word to General Lincoln by fast cutter that he would be moving to take Savannah in less than a fortnight and had suggested, almost as an afterthought, that the American forces from Purysburg and Charles Town might wish to join in the operation. Thomas Brown had a reliable spy named James Curry in Lincoln’s headquarters, just twenty miles from Savannah, who immediately sent a written message describing this plan.

Brown was prepared the next morning, and he shared the sobering news with Governor Wright and the array of senior officers, with whom he felt decidedly ill at ease. He had always known that they did not consider him to be an equal. General Prevost and almost all other British military officials had made it clear that he was considered to be a disreputable officer and a reprobate who built his reputation on savages and militiamen more interested in looting than in conducting themselves as proper Englishmen. He was glad to be called on to speak first.

Brown looked around the room and then said, with a studied calmness, “We have now sighted at least three dozen French ships, including two with fifty guns, and eleven frigates. Several troopships are as close inshore as possible, and shallow draft cutters are approaching them, apparently sent down from Carolina. There is no doubt that Savannah is their goal. We also have reports that General Lincoln and the Continental army are preparing to move this way.”