American Plans for a Fourth Invasion of East Florida

During the first four years of the War for Independence, the British-held province of East Florida was a large and painful thorn in the side of the southern states. Under the leadership of royal governor Patrick Tonyn, a former army officer, East Florida became a haven for Loyalists fleeing from Georgia and the Carolinas. Tonyn organized some of these refugees into a regiment known as the East Florida or King’s Rangers, under Lt. Col. Thomas Brown, and their frequent raids into southern Georgia did much to destabilize that state. British regulars under Gen. Augustine Prevost also constituted a threat, making a serious incursion into Georgia in the fall of 1778. Political and military leaders in the southern states were well aware of the danger posed by their hostile neighbor and launched three unsuccessful attempts to seize East Florida in 1776, 1777, and 1778. In October 1778, the Marquis de Bretigney, a French officer, devised a detailed plan for a fourth invasion of the province and the capture of its capital, St. Augustine. Bretigney’s proposal, along with two others from anonymous writers, won the endorsement of Maj. Gen. Robert Howe, Continental commander of the Southern Department, to make another attack on East Florida, and the idea was embraced by the Continental Congress. If undertaken as intended, a powerful invasion force would have had an excellent chance of achieving its objective, but the British attack on Georgia in December 1778 put an end to the plans and put the Americans on the defensive in the South.

Charles Francois Sevelinges, born in Soissons, France, in 1754, was not a member of the French nobility, though he called himself the Marquis de Bretigney. He began serving in the French army in 1775 and claimed to have held the rank of lieutenant colonel, another dubious assertion given that his French military service ended in 1777 when he was no more than twenty-three-years old.[1] Despite his youth, Bretigney apparently possessed considerable wealth—when he approached the American commissioners in Paris in late May or early June 1777 with his offer to serve in America, he stated that he wished to bring ten other officers with him at his own expense, along with arms and equipment for 130 men. On June 12, the American representatives accepted Bretigney’s offer. Bretigney and his party planned to sail in late June from Nantes aboard the Anonyme; the vessel also carried supplies procured by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the French government’s intermediary in providing aid to the United States.[2]

Either the ship’s departure was delayed or the voyage was unusually long, since the first report of Bretigney’s arrival in America came from John Lewis Gervais in Charlestown, South Carolina, who on November 3 informed his friend Henry Laurens, then serving as president of the Continental Congress, that “we have had another importation of French Men with Credentials from Mr Francklin.” Gervais noted that Bretigney “is the head & has ten or eleven Officiers with him” and had brought uniforms and arms for 130 men, “having Freighted a Vessel for that purpose,” an indication that Bretigney may have chartered his own ship rather than sailing on the Anonyme. The marquis expected that Congress “will accept his Services to raise a Corps of Light Troops,” Gervais wrote, adding that “I believe he wants nothing but to be Colonel of this intended Regt.” and hoped that Congress would pay the enlistment bounties for the recruits, who would be “none but Frenchmen.” Bretigney impressed Gervais, who remarked that he “had the honner of Monsr De Britigny’s acquaintance. I find him a Sensible Man & I believe, as far as I can judge a good Officier, and Zealous in Our Cause.”[3]

South Carolina president John Rutledge was less impressed with the newcomers. Bretigney arrived “with his Suite . . . some days ago,” Rutledge told Laurens on November 7. “As usual, they had no Money and application was made to our inexhaustible Treasury, for a supply,” Rutledge sarcastically wrote. State officials decided to send the French officers to Virginia by ship and gave them “what money may be necessary, for forwarding ’em to Congress.” Rutledge asked Bretigney to send him an account of expenses so the state could seek reimbursement from Congress. “We are so plagued with Sturdy Beggars, of Chevaliers, and french adventurers, commended or recommended by the Congress’s Commissioners at Paris, that I am out of all Patience with ’em,” Rutledge complained.[4]