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Spoilers below through episode five of Outlander season eight.

Midway through its final season, Outlander finds the Fraser clan split up geographically once again. After discovering that former British officer (Kieran Bew) really is recruiting for the Redcoats right under his nose, Jamie (Sam Heughan) decides it would be a good idea after all to raise a militia of his own at Fraser’s Ridge. Knowing they are going down to Savannah to see Lord John Grey (David Berry), Jamie instructs Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and Roger (Richard Rankin) to buy weapons from the Continental Army contingent stationed there. (Brianna also goes on a side quest to finally have an overdue, candid chat with her brother, William.)

The family knows that an event called the Siege of Savannah is coming imminently based on Frank Randall’s book, The Soul of a Rebel. In the historical account, Frank wrote that the battle took place mostly away from the center of the city. “The battle will be bloody,” Jamie says, “So if you wait out the fighting there, you should be safe enough, as will Fergus and Marsali.”

Of course, this being Outlander, it’s impossible to stick to the plan, no matter how good the intentions or how hard they try. Roger ends up getting stuck with the Continental Army outside of Savannah after Colonel Marion (Mark Huberman) refuses to let anyone, including a minister, leave the camp should they give advance warning to the British forces. Brianna, Fergus (César Domboy), and Marsali (Lauren Lyle) did stay back in Savannah’s city center, but Fergus and Marsali already had local enemies of their own, harboring their own attack from within.

Outside the realm of Outlander, here’s what we know really happened at the Siege of Savannah.

What led up to the Siege of Savannah?

By late 1778, British commanders had concluded that the war in the north had reached a stalemate, shifting focus to a new “Southern” strategy, where they believed significant loyalist support still remained. Savannah was the primary target because it was a major Atlantic port and trade hub, and one that offered Britain a strategically accessible coastal base from which to reconquer Georgia and threaten South Carolina.

A British force of 3,000 soldiers captured Savannah on December 29, 1778, overwhelming the roughly 700 to 900 American troops defending it. The following spring, General George Washington pushed for a counteroffensive, proposing a joint operation using a French naval squadron—then in the Caribbean—to retake the city, warning that British control of Georgia would put South Carolina at risk. The French stayed in the West Indies until they learned British forces in Savannah had been thinned by an expedition to Charleston. They sailed for Georgia in late summer 1779, linked up with the Continental Army forces in the south, linking up outside Savannah in early September 1779.

What happened during the Siege of Savannah?

The combined French and American forces assembled outside Savannah totaled more than 5,000 soldiers. The British had roughly 3,000 defending the city. Despite having the advantage in numbers, the Continental Army faced a well-fortified position. So they chose to lay siege to the city (setting up a blockade and literally starving the people inside into surrender) rather than launch an immediate assault.

On the morning of October 9, the Continental Army launched a major assault on the Spring Hill Redoubt, under the mistaken belief that it was lightly held by local Loyalist militia. It was not. The fortification was actually heavily defended by veteran British troops, and fog compounded the problem. The French and American troops became disoriented in the swamps, and when it lifted after sunrise, the French lines were fully exposed to concentrated fire from the British.

“The action did not last longer than an hour; it was very violent. The enemy, almost as numerous as we, as we learned later, had gathered the greater part of their force around the Spring Hill redoubt; and it appears certain that two American deserters alerted them about the point of attack the day before,” Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, Count of Estaing and commander of the French fleet at the Siege of Savannah, wrote at the time. “That no attention at all was paid to the two feint attacks from the trenches is even more reason for thinking so. The diversion that 500 Americans were to attempt on the enemy’s left did not take place. They got lost. The two American galleys caused the attack from the river to fail. The first one, towed by longboats, dropped anchor. The second one was filled full of water, and M. le chevalier Durumain, ship’s lieutenant who commanded this operation, could never get upriver as far as the city.”

Among those mortally wounded was Casimir Pulaski, the Polish cavalry commander who had been instrumental in building the Continental Army’s mounted forces. The French sailed out a week later, leaving the local Continental forces that survived without backup, and by mid-October, the siege collapsed.

What was the outcome of the siege?

The assault ranked among the costliest of the American Revolution for the Continental Army. Allied forces suffered more than 800 casualties, including the death of Polish Count Casimir Pulaski, while British losses numbered fewer than 100. The failed siege bolstered British morale and validated their Southern strategy, tightening their hold on Georgia and setting back American efforts to reclaim the colony. The British held Savannah until voluntarily evacuating in July 1782.