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attack is begun.
The opposing grenadiers at first
stood firm, and discharged volley after volley at an enemy whom the thicket concealed.
But, as Ogle-
thorpe hastened to the scene, he found the victory already complete, except as a Highland shout or the yell of an Indian announced the discovery of some straggling Spaniard.
The enemy had retreated, with a loss of about two hundred men, leaving to the ground, which was now strown with the dead, the name of ‘the
Bloody Marsh.’
Despairing of success, and weakened by divisions,—
deceived, too, by an ingenious stratagem,—the Spaniards, on the night of the fourteenth, reembarked, leaving a quantity of ammunition and guns behind them.
On the eighteenth, on their way to the south, they renewed their attack on
Fort William, which was bravely defended by
Stuart and his little garrison of fifty men. The English boats watched the movements of the retreating squadron till it was south of the
St. John's; and, on the twenty-fourth day of July,
Oglethorpe could publish an order for a general thanksgiving for the end of the invasion.
Thus was
Georgia colonized and defended; its frontiers were safe against inroads; and, though
Florida still lingered under the jurisdiction of
Spain, its limits were narrowed.
To meet the complaints of the disaffected,
Oglethorpe, after a year of tranquillity, sailed for
England, never again to behold the colony
with which the disinterested toils of ten years had identified his fame.
For the welfare of
Georgia, he had renounced ease and the enjoyment of fortune, to
scorn danger, and fare ‘much harder than any of the people that were settled there.’
Yet his virtues were the result of sentiment, not of reflection, and were
