Eight days after the failed assault, allied forces give up on Savannah and march away

Nine days after a botched dawn assault left hundreds of Allied soldiers dead in the fog outside Savannah, there was nothing left to do but leave. On October 17, 1779, Major General Benjamin Lincoln and Vice Admiral Charles-Henri d'Estaing, the wounded French commander, called off the roughly five-week siege and withdrew their combined force. D'Estaing's ships, plagued by scurvy and dysentery, sailed off; Lincoln's troops marched back toward South Carolina. Savannah stayed under British control until July 1782…