After establishing the third parallel and digging a mine, the Patriot troops were exhausted, and promised reinforcements from the Virginia militia failed to arrive. Frustrated by the slow progress of the siegeworks and the news that Lord Rawdon's 2,000 troops were headed to Ninety Six to relieve Cruger, Greene faced a difficult choice, as he was not yet in a position to breach the Star Fort and his tired troops would be no match for Rawdon's. Urged by his officers and men to storm the fort before Rawdon's arrival rather than abandon the siege, Greene reluctantly agreed to an assault. Fifty men volunteered to lead the charge, and this group, called the Forlorn Hope, surged from the trenches at noon on June 18, 1781. Armed with axes, these Patriots tried to cut through the outer defenses along the fort perimeter so that soldiers following with hooks could pull down the sandbags and breach the walls. They were quickly pinned in the ditch around the Loyalist earthwork, caught in the crossfire of marksmen in the star-shaped fort and surprised by 60 Loyalists who ran out the fort entrance and attacked them from each side. Of the 50 Patriots assaulting the Star Fort, 30 were killed or wounded.