Count Dillon, who during the siege had been on D’Estaing’s right, and who appears to have been second in command in the French army, in this assault was placed in command of a second attacking column.  His purpose was to move to the right of General Huger, and keeping in the edge of the swamps along the river, steal past the enemy’s batteries on the left, and attack him in the rear.  Bancroft describes the results of his efforts as follows:  “The column under Count Dillon, which was to have attacked the rear of the British lines, became entangled in a swamp of which it should only have skirted the edge was helplessly exposed to the British batteries and could not even be formed.”  Here were the two strong sand-filled redoubts, mounted with heavy cannon, and these may have been the batteries that stopped Dillon’s column.

Count Pulaski with his two hundred brave cavalrymen, undertook his part in the deadly drama with ardor, and began that perilous ride which had for its object:  “to penetrate the enemy’s lines, between the battery on the left of the Springhill redoubt, and the next towards the river.”  Balch describes it as an attempt to “penetrate into the city by galloping between the redoubts.”  It was the anticipation of the Crimean “Charge of the Light Brigade;” only in this case, no one blundered; it was simply a desperate chance.  Cannon were to the right, left, and front, and the heroic charge proved in vain; the noble Pole fell, banner[8] in hand, pierced with a mortal wound—­another foreign martyr to our dearly bought freedom.

The cavalry dash having failed, that much of the general plan was blotted out.  The feints may have been understood; it is said a sergeant of the Charleston Grenadiers deserted during the night of the 8th and gave the whole plan of the attack to General Prevost, so that he knew just where to strengthen his lines.  The feints were effectually checked by the garrison on the left, twenty-eight of the Americans being killed:  while Dillon’s column was stopped by the batteries near the river.  This state of affairs allowed the whole of Maitland’s force to protect the Springhill redoubt and that part of the line which was most threatened.  The Springhill redoubt, as has been stated, was occupied by the South Carolina regiment and a corps of dragoons.  This circumstance may account for the fact, that while the three hundred and fifty Charleston militia occupied a most exposed position in the attacking column, only one man among them was killed and but six wounded.  The battery on the left of this redoubt was garrisoned by grenadiers and marines.