On the 12th April, therefore, Tarleton moved off to Goose Creek on his way to Monk’s Corner, thirty miles from Charleston, where there lay the American post that held Biggin’s Bridge over the Cooper. Knowing that the enemy was superior to him in cavalry, he had determined to make a night attack, and he had the good fortune on the way to pick up a negro who acquainted him with the enemy’s dispositions. Learning from this source that the American force was divided, the cavalry being on his own side of the river and the infantry on the other, he pushed on through the night, and at 3 A.M. surprised the main guard of the cavalry. Galloping hard on the backs of the fugitives he dashed straight into the camp, dispersed the far superior force that lay there, and captured 150 prisoners, 400 horses, and 50 ammunition waggons. The bridge being thus uncovered he at once ordered his infantry across it against the American post on the other side; and this having been captured, detached a force to seize Bowman’s Ferry, which commanded another branch of the Cooper. This was promptly done, and by the evening [Sidenote: 1780.] the American communications on the Cooper were cut through and Charleston completely isolated. The Americans, however, were not so easily to be baulked. Huger himself and his principal officer, Colonel Washington,[7] had managed to escape by hiding in a swamp, and before the end of April had begun to collect another force of cavalry to the north of the Santee, a river which runs parallel to the Cooper, and at its nearest point is not above twenty miles from Biggin’s Bridge. On the 6th of May this force crossed the Santee, snapped up a British foraging party, and prepared to recross the river, a few miles lower down, at Lanew’s Ferry. Tarleton, who was patrolling with the detachment of the Seventeenth and some of his own dragoons, 150 men all told, learned what had happened, and pressed on with all haste to catch the Americans before they could repass the Santee. Once again he caught a superior force by surprise. Coming up at 3 P.M. with the American vedettes he at once drove them in upon the picquet, and was on the backs of the main body in an instant. Five officers and 36 men were cut down, 7 officers and 60 men made prisoners, and the rest, including Colonel Washington, driven into the river to escape as best they could by swimming. Tarleton, who had lost but two men and four horses killed, marched back to camp, twenty-six miles, on the same evening, with the result that twenty horses died of fatigue. But Tarleton, as we shall see, never spared men or horses.