The siege was raised; the great effort had gone for nothing but the destruction of a few unimportant British ships. The British fleet, now heavily reinforced by the thirteen powerful ships under Byron which had left England in June, had command of the sea. D’Estaing spent two months refitting at Boston, and then following the letter of his orders, left on November 4, 1778, for the West Indies, where he was much more fortunate, but where we cannot follow him. His departure left our coast open to invasion at every point, and thus Savannah was occupied in December by a strong British force; it was the beginning of the Southern invasion which was to cost us dear. Pressed by our people, d’Estaing in the summer of 1779, though he had received orders to return with his own particular squadron to France, determined to attempt to dislodge the British at Savannah. He thus left Santo Domingo with twenty ships-of-the-line and seven frigates, and anchored, on August 31, 1779, off Tybee at the mouth of the Savannah River, on which, eighteen miles from the sea, is Savannah, then but a small village. Troops were landed by the French, an attack made, and an expedition, expected to be completed in eight days, extended to two months. It ended in disaster; gale after gale crippled the French fleet here on an unprotected coast, until on October 28th it was wholly dispersed. The flagship was driven to sea with the loss of both her only remaining anchors, and it was not until well into December that the main portions came together again in the West Indies. D’Estaing himself, however, was driven so far to sea that he determined to return alone to France. This he did, fortunately meeting the _Provence_ which gave him an anchor, and reached Brest on December 7, 1779. He returned, having accomplished nothing in aid of the United States itself, however fortunate in the West Indies. He was severely judged by naval officers of his service. One, however, need not go to the extent of Captain La Clocheterie, whom the Vicomte de Charlus (who kept a journal when crossing the Atlantic with Rochambeau’s expedition next year) reports as saying: “He was a coward and a man of no talent.” His failure is found rather in the _mot_ of a really great French sailor, Suffren: “If he had only been as much of a seaman as he was brave----”