Beginning in 1758, South Carolina fought a four-year war with the Cherokee Indians during the French and Indian War after French efforts to incite Southern Indians against the British. Governor William H. Lyttleton's 1759 attempt to defeat the Cherokee failed when a smallpox epidemic forced the abandonment of his expedition. In 1760, his successor William Bull asked General Jeffrey Amherst for help, and Amherst sent Colonel Archibald Montgomery with 1200 men from the Royal Scottish and Highlanders regiments. Montgomery arrived in Charleston on April 1, 1760, reached Fort Prince George on June 2, and on June 24 marched toward the Cherokee Middle Towns with a force increased by provincial militia to 1600 men, hoping their destruction would bring the Cherokee to terms and relieve besieged Fort Loudoun on the Tennessee River. Following the Cherokee Trading Path across the Keowee and Oconee Rivers, the troops crossed Rabun Gap at 4am on June 27 and entered the Little Tennessee Valley bound for Echoe, the lowest of the Middle Towns. At 10am, the advance guard entered a narrow pass between mountains on the left and low hills on the right, partly enclosed by the river, where Cherokee led by Chief Occonostota attacked from both sides and forced the column back. Montgomery sent in the Provincial Rangers, while the Royal Scots moved to the hills on the right and the Highlanders to the mountains on the left; under this pressure the Cherokee withdrew to the mountains. After four hours of fighting, the British marched on, forded the river north of the battlefield, and saved their baggage train, guarded by only 100 men, after heavy fighting. Although the army reached Echoe, it left after a day for Fort Prince George because Montgomery considered the mountains ahead impassable and believed advancing would require abandoning his sick and wounded. He returned to Fort Prince George on July 1 with nearly 100 casualties and no gains, and Fort Loudoun surrendered to the Cherokee on August 9. Montgomery's expedition was one of the few times the Cherokee defeated a British colonial army. On June 10, 1761, however, a 2800-man expedition under Colonel James Grant defeated the Cherokee in a second Battle of Echoe fought two miles southeast of the 1760 battlefield, beginning a long series of reverses from which the Cherokee never recovered.