This latter circumstance suggested the idea of attacking them while divided; and his perfect knowledge of the woods favored the project of surprising one of their encampments.  In furtherance of this design, he drew out three hundred regular troops, the Highland company, the rangers, and Indians, and marched in the night, unobserved within a mile and a half of the Spanish camp.  There his troops halted, and he advanced at the head of a select corps to reconnoitre the enemy.  While he was using the utmost circumspection to obtain the necessary information without being discovered, an occurrence of the most villanous nature, disconcerted the project.  As the particulars of this have been variously narrated, I am happy in being enabled to give the General’s own account of the affair.[1] In his official despatch to the Duke of Newcastle, dated at Frederica, in Georgia, 30th of July, 1742, he says,—­“A Frenchman who, without my knowledge was come down among the volunteers, fired his gun, and deserted.  Our Indians in vain pursued, but could not take him.  Upon this, concluding that we should be discovered, I divided the drums into different parts, and they beat the Grenadier’s march for about half an hour; then ceased, and we marched back in silence.  The next day I prevailed with a prisoner, and gave him a sum of money to carry a letter privately, and deliver it to that Frenchman who had deserted.  This letter was written in French, as if from a friend of his, telling him he had received the money; that he should try to make the Spaniards believe the English were weak; that he should undertake to pilot up their boats and galleys, and then bring them under the woods, where he knew the hidden batteries were; that if he could bring that about he should have double the reward he had already received; and that the French deserters should have all that had been promised to them.  The Spanish prisoner got into their camp, and was immediately carried before the General, Don Manuel de Monteano.  He was asked how he escaped, and whether he had any letters; but denying he had any, was strictly searched, and the letter found, and he, upon being pardoned, confessed that he had received money to deliver it to the Frenchman, (for the letter was not directed.) The Frenchman denied his knowing any thing of the contents of the letter, or having received any money, or correspondence with me.  Notwithstanding which, a council of war was held, and they decreed the Frenchman to be a double spy; but General Monteano would not suffer him to be executed, having been employed by him.  However they embarked all their troops with such precipitation that they left behind their cannon, &c., and those dead of their wounds, unburied.”

[Footnote 1:  Transcribed from the Georgia Historical documents, by my excellent friend T.K.  TEFFT, Esq., of Savannah.  The particulars of this singularly interesting ruse de guerre are detailed in all the accounts of the Spanish invasion; and in each with some variation, and in all rather more circumstantially than the above.  See Gentleman’s Magazine for 1742, p. 695; London Magazine for 1758, p. 80; HEWATT’S History of South Carolina, Vol.  II. p. 117; McCALL’S History of Georgia, I. p. 184; RAMSAY’S History of the United States, I. 167, and MARSHALL’S History of the Colonies, p. 289.]