The next attempt was the siege of Ninety-Six, but which proved unsuccessful, and Greene was obliged to retreat over the Saluda. Lord Rawdon now prepared to evacuate the garrison of Ninety-Six, and return to Charleston; and General Greene became in reality the pursuing party, exceedingly anxious to bring the enemy to battle. But this did not take place till September; the British at that time were posted at Eutaw Springs, where General Greene, who had assembled about two thousand men, prepared to follow and attack them. The American force was drawn up in two lines; the first, composed of Carolina militia, was commanded by Generals Marion and Pickens, and Colonel de Malmedy. The second, which consisted of continental troops from North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, was commanded by General Sumpter, Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, and Colonel Williams. As the Americans approached toward an attack, they fell in with some advanced parties of the enemy, at about three miles ahead of the main body. These being driven back, the action soon became general. In the very heat of the engagement General Greene ordered the Maryland and Virginia continentals to charge with trailed arms. This decided the fate of the day. “Nothing,” says Dr. Ramsay, “could surpass the intrepidity of both officers and men on this occasion. They rushed on in good order through a heavy cannonade, and a shower of musketry, with such unshaken resolution that they bore down all before them.” The British were broken, closely pursued, and upward of eleven hundred of them killed and taken prisoners; the loss of the Americans was about five hundred. Judge Johnson, in his life of General Greene, says—“At the battle of the Eutaw Springs, Greene says, that hundreds of my men were naked as they were born. Posterity will scarcely believe that the bare loins of many brave men who carried death into the enemy’s ranks at the Eutaw, were galled by their cartouche-boxes, while a folded rag or a tuft of moss protected the shoulders from sustaining the same injury from the musket. Men of other times will inquire by what magic was the army kept together? By what supernatural power was it made to fight?” General Greene in his letter to the Secretary of War says—“We have three hundred men without arms, and more than one thousand so naked that they can be put on duty only in cases of a desperate nature.” Again he says—“Our difficulties are so numerous, and our wants so pressing, that I have not a moment’s relief from the most painful anxieties. I have more embarrassment than it is proper to disclose to the world. Let it suffice to say that this part of the United States has had a narrow escape. _I have been seven months in the field without taking off my clothes._” Such then was the issue of the battle of Eutaw, and the last essay in arms in which it was the fortune of General Greene to command.