THIS BOOK IS A DEPICTION and an interpretation of the way that battles and campaigns were fought during the American Revolutionary War. Because not all the battles of the Revolution are included—and because I have focused on the tactics and strategy involved in the selected examples—the book is neither a history of the American Revolution nor a chronicle of the war itself. For my purposes, the outcome of a battle and its effects on the course of the war have been secondary in its selection to its uniqueness in the comparative light of the war’s other engagements and operations. Despite the wealth of historical material that has accumulated in over two hundred years, historians have developed a tendency to regard the battles of our Revolutionary War as being of questionable worth for military historians and their readers because they are “all of a piece”—too much alike. It is therefore the primary purpose of this book to refute that thesis and show, in its place, that there were unique battles—battles that can and should be included in the study of military history.
It would be helpful to review the character of the war itself. In the dozen years after the end of the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War in America), Britain stood, wittingly or not, on the threshold of empire. Her American colonies were only a part of her global commitments. So far-flung were her imperial goals—from Europe to India—that the festering rebellion in North America was at first a minor irritant that grew only by degrees into what the Colonial Office could recognize as a real war.
Unfortunately for the British cause, it was that office that gave primary direction to the strategy governing military operations in the war in America, and its ineptitude from the outset caused the conduct of the war to become an operational and logistical nightmare. Separated by 3,000 miles from the theater of war and under constant attacks from its not-so-loyal opposition, His Majesty’s government continued for six unhappy years to devise strategies that would win a war that the country didn’t want, against an enemy whose people were—by most Englishmen’s lights—Englishmen.
Against that background, British generals had to face a strategic picture that seemed to change with every campaign. Further, they were fighting in an alien environment. The British officers of all ranks were accustomed to maneuvering and fighting on the plains of Europe in campaigns and battles governed by linear tactics, following systems that came to be fashioned, in varying degree, on the models of Frederick the Great, though necessarily on a smaller scale. The British army was highly respected for its fighting qualities in Europe, and the force in America attempted to face the colonials in the same manner. But America was not Europe.
The enemy that the British faced in America, on the contrary, appeared on the battlefield in all sorts of garb, with all sorts of firearms, and was likely to take all sorts of tactical dispositions. In one engagement King George’s grenadiers and fusiliers might encounter ragged militia who would flee after the first volley; on another occasion, however, the British would be faced with uniformed Continentals who stood in regular lines and exchanged volley for volley. On yet another encounter the American force might be a mixture. In consequence, the nature of the engagements of the war might vary in ways as different as the combatants themselves. The quality of American leadership also varied from battle to battle. That is why, whenever practicable, this book focuses on the American leaders, their problems—often dilemmas—and actions and reactions.
Let us consider some examples. At Bunker Hill, the rawest of American militia were led in the right places by veteran officers who knew how to handle militia from their experience in the French and Indian War. The American campaign against Quebec, also, shows desperate assaults by militia under the superb leadership of Montgomery and Arnold. It also witnesses Morgan’s lapse of moral courage following his splendid display of physical courage.
Then there is the contrast between Washington at his best and at his worst. At Trenton and Princeton, Washington—dubbed “the Fox” by his opponent, Lord Cornwallis—outfoxed the British by the skillful use of intelligence and maneuver to turn the tables in such fashion as to merit the praise of Frederick the Great himself. At Brandywine, some nine months later, the same Washington mishandled both intelligence and maneuver in a way to deserve the defeat that followed.
Earlier in August of the same year (1777) the strangest of the war’s battles was fought—without the participation of a single British soldier—between American militia and British Loyalists, the latter accompanied by Indian allies. The ambush, and the “turn-around” battle of Oriskany that ensued, has been called the most savage engagement of the war.
The two battles of Saratoga are examined in order to contrast the effective leadership of Arnold and Morgan with that of Horatio Gates, and show the influence of all three men on the battles.
At Kings Mountain in the South, one sees an all-out battle between two forces—both militia, and both composed entirely of Americans.
The battle at Cowpens in January of the war’s final year has been included, without reservation, as a tactical gem in anybody’s war. Dan Morgan, bedeviled with attacks of rheumatism and in a desperate situation, showed matchless leadership in handling a combination of militia and Continentals with such ingenuity that he inflicted losses of 85 percent on a professional enemy, in contrast with Morgan’s losses of less than 1 percent.
Cowpens is followed by Nathanael Greene’s brilliant strategical triumph over Cornwallis in the so-called race to the Dan, which culminated in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. In that fiercely fought engagement Greene’s poor tactics nearly robbed him of all that his superlative strategy had gained.
The book ends with the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes, which is included not because it was different from the others by virtue of being a naval battle but because of the way that de Grasse, the French admiral, turned a drawn battle into a strategical victory through a series of after-action maneuvers.
Through all the battles there runs a common thread: each one’s uniqueness when viewed against others in the War of the Revolution.
WELL-MEANING EFFORTS TO THE CONTRARY, it is not possible to show a single composite portrait of the American soldier of the Revolutionary War, simply because there were two of him: the militiaman and the Continental. The former was a citizen soldier called upon to serve for limited periods of time, usually a few weeks or months, whereas the Continental was the American “regular” who had enlisted in the Continental army for three years or the duration of the war.
The militiaman belonged to a locally raised company and had a natural bent toward the traditional protection of home and community. He most often marched and fought within his home region, and would return to his fireside when, to his way of thinking, his job was done. Thus large numbers of militia often disappeared without notice—and with no feeling on the part of the deserters that they were committing an abhorrent military crime. The melting away of militia units at critical times during a campaign was the despair of Washington and his commanders, prompting them to label militia in general—usually with good cause—as less than steadfast.
The militiaman clearly lacked the discipline and training of the regular, causing him often to fail his leaders at just the wrong time—sometimes by fleeing when he found himself facing British bayonets, as at Camden or Long Island. Yet, as Mark Boatner has observed, “at Bunker Hill, Cowpens, and Guilford, the militia showed that if commanded by experienced officers who knew their weakness they could fight like regular soldiers” (Encyclopedia of the American Revolution).
The Continentals, or “regular” soldiers, were born in the mind of Washington when he found himself commanding an army of 17,000 militia at the siege of Boston in July 1775. The enlistments of his troops would all expire by the end of the year, so the new commander in chief worked relentlessly on the Continental Congress to cease depending on militia and instead place its reliance on a long-service army. “Our liberties,” he wrote, “might be lost if their defense is left to any but a permanent standing army; I mean one to exist during the [duration of the] war.” By September 1776 Congress authorized the raising of eighty-eight regiments of a Continental army, to be apportioned among the thirteen states—hence such terms as the “Continental Line” or the “1st Maryland Continentals” will be found in the descriptions of battles and campaigns. As for the number of regiments in the field, there was always a marked difference between what had been authorized and what was present for service. But the Continental system, with all its shortcomings, was a vast improvement over the militia system.
On rare occasions Continentals and militia fought battles on their own, but a combination of the two—regiments fighting side by side or in supporting formations—was the general rule. Later in the war, as with Daniel Morgan’s little army at Cowpens in January 1781, some militia units had acquired a leavening of discharged Continentals.
The militiaman was required to report for duty, at least in the earlier years of the war, with his own firearm, usually the family flintlock musket (commonly called a firelock) or a fowling piece. Types and calibers of muskets were as varied as their owners. The weapon might be a Brown Bess (described in the section below on the British soldier) of French and Indian War vintage, a gunsmith-crafted article of local fabrication, or perhaps a contracted Committee of Safety musket. Calibers varied anywhere from .50 to .80, which necessitated all manner of bullet molds, a real headache when it came to supplying the soldiers with ammunition in the field. According to Charles L. Bolton, “The running of balls—running the lead into the molds—was a frequent duty in camp” (The Private Soldier under Washington).
In addition to his musket the citizen soldier had to provide either a cartridge box (a leather box containing a wooden block bored with holes to hold paper cartridges) or a powder horn and bullet pouch. Optional items might include a belt knife or hand ax and a canteen. Only a negligible few showed up with bayonets.
There was no such thing as an “issued militia uniform,” though a few companies or regiments strove for uniformity with buckskin or linen hunting shirts. But the key word for militia dress was motley, as exemplified in Christopher Ward’s description of the militia who followed Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in the advance on Fort Ticonderoga in 1775: “Behind them went a straggling column of men in every sort of garb—buckskin, linsey-woolsey [homespun], or what not, beaver hats, felt hats, coonskin caps, buckled shoes or moccasins—armed with firelocks, pistols, swords, knives, or simple clubs, not a bayonet among them all” (The War of the Revolution). Despite the varied headgear at Fort Ticonderoga, the most common was the civilian cocked hat. Another common item of clothing was the cotton or flax shirt worn beneath a jacket or coat. Below those the man wore “small clothes”—knee breeches, which were fastened below the knee, and long stockings or leggings and cowhide shoes. The militiaman would be carrying some kind of haversack suspended from a shoulder strap. His equipment would be completed with his blanket roll.
The Continental soldier’s weapon was the flintlock musket, a muzzleloader some 50 to 60 inches long with a caliber varying from .69 to .75, depending on its origin. At first there was no standard model, and the Continentals were armed with whatever the Congress or states could purchase, aside from captured muskets or other guns confiscated from the Loyalists. Eventually the French Charleville musket (models of the years 1763 through 1771) could be considered standard issue; over 100,000 were shipped to America from French arsenals. Still, the basic characteristics remained unchanged. The muskets were .69 caliber with a 441/2-inch barrel, an overall length of 5 feet, 2 inches, and a refined gunlock that was in fact superior to that of the British musket. The French musket was equipped with a socket bayonet about 15 inches long.
The Continental soldier was trained to load and fire his musket in a series of “times” or “motions” on command—today soldiers would call it “by the numbers.” The older drill manuals like the “Norfolk Discipline” or the British “Sixty-fourth,” which called for seventeen or more motions in loading, were replaced by a simplified version of Timothy Pickering’s, and later by the clearer manual of von Steuben. What the soldier did, in simple terms, was to take the cartridge (a round lead bullet and a load of powder wrapped in a cylinder of paper) from his cartridge box, bite off the nonbullet end, pour a little priming powder in the pan on his gunlock, then pour the rest of the powder, followed by the bullet, and the paper as wadding, down the barrel. Next he drew his ramrod from its “pipes” below the barrel and rammed the bullet and paper firmly down against the powder charge. He then returned his ramrod, “presented his piece” (pointed it at the enemy), pulled the hammer back to full cock, and on command pulled the trigger to fire his musket.
The Continental’s basic uniform consisted of his cocked hat, a cotton shirt over which he wore waistcoat and regimental coat, and below those his breeches or overalls (with gaiters, if overalls were not prescribed), stockings, and shoes of leather or hide. He wore two cross belts over his coat: one over his left shoulder to support the cartridge box at his right hip; the other over his right shoulder, carrying the bayonet in its scabbard. On campaign the soldier carried his knapsack surmounted by his rolled blanket, and a canteen on a shoulder strap. In winter, if he was lucky, he would have a greatcoat or capote (blanket coat), mittens or gloves, and a wool scarf. There were, however, far too many who were not so lucky.
The quality and quantities of uniforms varied from state to state, even for Continentals. In October 1778, however, large quantities of uniforms were supplied by the French to fill a real need. The breeches and waistcoats were white, but the coats came in two colors, brown and blue, with red facings. They were assigned to the different states by lot: North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York drew the blue, and Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire wore brown. As Ward explains, this was the first time that anything like uniform dress for the whole army had been made possible.
Congress was not able to supply uniforms for officers; it was difficult enough to try to keep the troops in uniform. As a result, officers’ uniforms were often as motley as those of their men. When Washington assumed command during the siege of Boston, one of his first actions was to provide distinctive insignia for the officers. For general officers he prescribed “ribbands” to be worn between the coat and waistcoat. His own, at a cost of three shillings fourpence, was light blue. Major generals were to wear purple, brigadier generals were to be pink. Field officers were to be distinguished by “red or pink cockades in their hats, captains yellow or buff; the subalterns green.” Sergeants were instructed to wear a shoulder knot of red cloth on the right shoulder. Corporals would wear a green knot.1
When Congress authorized the raising of the eighty-eight Continental regiments in 1776, each state was assigned a quota in proportion to its population. Regiments in the field varied in size from about 700 men down to as few as 350, depending on how many losses they had sustained. The regiment was normally divided into two battalions, but if its total strength fell much below 350 it was thought best to reorganize the regiment into one battalion. By 1778 companies had a minimum strength of forty privates, three corporals, one ensign (the counterpart of today’s second lieutenant), one lieutenant, and a captain—for a total of forty-nine; drummers and/or fifers were also authorized if available. The company’s standard formation, as shown in the diagram, was based on von Steuben’s manual: thus “a company is to be formed in two ranks,2 at one pace distant, with the tallest men in the rear, and both ranks sized, with the shortest men of each in the centre. A company thus drawn up is to be divided into two . . . platoons.”
The infantryman’s home was his company—just as our army would have it today—and though each company had a number, it was commonly known by the name of its captain or the locale it came from: hence Captain Jones’s company of the 5th Pennsylvania line, or the Danbury company, 21st Connecticut Regiment, Continental line.
No review of the American soldier would be complete without a look at the riflemen, who were not to be confused with “light infantry”—line troops armed with muskets. The rifle had been known in Europe for generations, especially in the Austrian Tyrol and Germany, where it had been developed as a hunting weapon—hence the expression “the jäger with his rifle.” The short, heavy jäger rifle, though brought to America by German settlers in the early eighteenth century, was unsuited to the needs of the American frontiersman. What the hunter and Indian fighter of the backwoods needed was an accurate, long-range rifle firing a ball of relatively small caliber (he had to carry all his powder and ball; smaller lead balls taking a smaller powder charge made for more shots per pound): a rifle that was rugged, dependable, and light in weight. “The woodsmen came back from the wilderness to talk with the gunsmiths, and the gunsmiths listened” (Lagemann and Manucy, The Long Rifle). The eventual result was the famous “long rifle,” or “Kentucky rifle,” a weapon of such craftsmanship and beauty that one can still bring tears to the eyes of a collector.3
At the start of the Revolution the rifle was unknown in New England, so it was not remarkable that Congress’s authorization for rifle companies was limited to two companies from Virginia, two from Maryland, and six (later increased to eight) from Pennsylvania. The riflemen were famed for their sharpshooting; their prowess never failed to amaze the New Englanders, who gawked at their feats of marksmanship when the rifle companies arrived to join the army at the siege of Boston. John Adams, in a letter to his wife in 1776, spoke of “a peculiar kind of musket, called a rifle, used by riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.”
The rifleman’s dress was so practical that Washington tried unsuccessfully to adopt a similar uniform for the entire army. Its main feature was the long buckskin or linen hunting shirt, which was belted at the waist, yet was loose enough to allow freedom of movement. The shirt came about halfway to the knees, covering breeches of the same material. The garb was rounded out with leggings, and the feet were shod with moccasins or cowhide shoes. The headgear was a round wool cap with a brim. The whole outfit was as simple as it was practical.
In spite of its superior range and accuracy, the rifle had serious tactical drawbacks. It took too long to load—a trained Continental could fire three rounds with his musket while the rifleman was reloading—and it could not be fitted with a bayonet. And despite his famed marksmanship, the rifleman was found to be effective only in irregular operations which were characterized by scouting and skirmishing. Because they were without bayonets and also unable to deliver a rapid series of volleys in the face-off battles of the time, riflemen were ineffective where volume of fire counted above all else. Accordingly, we should dispense forever with the cherished American myth that our ancestors “licked the redcoats fair and square because the latter, with their muskets and rigid battle lines, could not stand up to the rifles of our sharpshooting forebears.” The proportion of riflemen to musket-armed infantry on the rolls of the Continental army in November 1778, in fact, shows the army’s authorized strength at 35,000, while the aforementioned twelve rifle companies could muster, at full strength, some 960 men—less than 3 percent of the army’s total numbers.
VIEWED MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED YEARS LATER, the nature of the British enlisted man who fought in America now seems an enigma. Although he campaigned with stolidity and courage, his background would appear to have produced a man who would desert at the first opportunity. He enjoyed little public esteem. The British army in general, and its lower echelons of enlisted men in particular, were held in contempt by English society, constantly ridiculed by the press, and subject to abuse in the streets. The rank and file existed in another world from the officers, who came from the aristocracy or wealthy families who could afford to purchase their commissions. The public attitude toward the soldier can be summed up in a saying attributed to the Royal Navy (who were not such a grand lot themselves): “A messmate before a shipmate, a shipmate before a stranger, a stranger before a dog, a dog before a soldier.” While there may have been a few “silly lads befooled by the glamour of the scarlet coat,” the majority, in Christopher Ward’s words, were unfortunates who had been impressed into service: “Boys and men made drunk by the recruiting sergeant and persuaded to take the ‘king’s shilling’ while hardly aware of what they were doing made up a considerable part of the army.” Others were criminals pardoned in exchange for enlisting. “Vagrants, smugglers, and criminals of various kinds might thus escape such legal penalties as had been adjudged them. .. . In this way every gaol served as a recruiting depot” (Edward Curtis, The Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution).
Coming from such discreditable backgrounds the enlisted man would seem in a position to improve his lot in the army; such, however, was seldom the case. Discipline was harsh, punishments cruel, food notoriously poor, and pay amounted to next to nothing after a private’s eight pence a day had been reduced by what Edward Curtis calls “gross off-reckonings,” charges for a shameful list of items, accounting for clothing, weapons repair, shaving kit, and “contributions” toward some future, nebulous medical care. Yet the British soldier not only endured but campaigned, for the most part, with a military effectiveness that served his country well.
The British army officer may likewise have served well in his own way, which was that of the professional whose family was established within or on the threshold of the upper classes. Since there were no military academies, the young officer usually got his start in the profession of arms at the tender age of fifteen, when his family purchased a commission for him in a suitable regiment. The commission was bought from the regimental commander, a colonel who had contracted with the Crown to raise and maintain a regiment. Although the purchase system had long been under attack, it continued to flourish throughout the eighteenth century. The rank of ensign in an ordinary infantry regiment went for £400, while the same grade sold for £900 in the Foot Guards. Commissions sold for correspondingly higher prices according to rank: a captaincy in an ordinary regiment cost £1,500; the same grade in the Foot Guards, £3,500. The commission, as property, belonged to the holder for life, and the only sure way to promotion was purchase of a commission of a higher grade. The unlucky exceptions were the officers whose means did not allow such advancement:
Many of the regimental officers were none the worse soldiers for the purchase system. Realizing that their lack of wealth blocked the way to high military advancement, they came to love their calling for itself . . . they regarded the regiment as their home and grew gray in uniform. . . . While there were marked exceptions, many regimental officers displayed sympathetic consideration for the comfort and happiness of their men. The bond between them and the noncommissioned officers was often extremely close; and they came to regard the corporals and sergeants . . . with the same kindly feeling as a master does an old family servant. (Curtis, The Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution)
Such NCOs and soldiers would follow the officers of their regiment into any kind of danger.
The infantry regiment (or battalion for tactical purposes) had an authorized strength of 477 “of all ranks,” but its average strength on campaign usually fell below 300 rank and file. The regiment was divided into ten companies, of which eight were “battalion companies,” that is, ordinary line companies. There were also two “flanking companies,” one of light infantry and one of grenadiers. These were the elite, called flanking companies because when deployed in standard battle formation the regiment had its most vulnerable points, the flanks, secured on the right by the grenadiers and on the left by the light infantry. Light infantrymen were selected for agility and physical endurance as well as their fighting qualities. When not in the regimental line of battle, light infantry were employed as advance guards, march flankers, outposts, reconnaissance elements, and skirmishers.
The grenadiers were expected to have the same martial qualities as light infantrymen, but in addition were chosen because they were tall men with healthy physiques. Dating back to 1677, grenadiers had the primary task of throwing hand grenades in close combat with the enemy. By 1774 the grenades had become obsolete, “but the grenadiers still remained, representing in height and strength the flower of each regiment.” It was common practice in the field to detach the flank companies from their parent regiments and form them into provisional elite battalions—what we might today call task forces. They were so employed on special missions, and were seen in action again and again in these formations when higher command deemed it necessary.
Light infantrymen were distinguished by their short red jackets and brimless caps, usually made of leather. Grenadiers wore tall bearskins faced with their regimental badges. The scarlet regimental coat was basically the same for grenadier and battalion companies, worn over a white waistcoat, and decorated with brass buttons, lace, and facings—that is, with lapels and cuffs in a distinctive regimental color that contrasted with the red coat. A white waist belt was worn under the coat, and it carried the bayonet scabbard on the left hip. There was only one cross belt, going over the left shoulder and supporting the cartridge box on the right side. The headgear of the battalion companies was the black cocked hat trimmed in white. The breeches were white and fastened tightly above the knee. Below them the soldier wore long, buttoned gaiters of black or dark brown.
Thus the uniform worn by the British soldiers in the 1770s would appear to be better suited to the parade ground than to the battlefield. Unfortunately for the soldier, it was also worn in field service, which makes it appear to be the design of madmen (or the sailors who rated the soldier below the dog), for a more impractical and uncomfortable dress for campaigning would be hard to imagine. In addition to the coat and waistcoat, the soldier had to endure a stiff collar and even stiffer stock under his chin. Everything had to be worn tightly: waist belt, breeches, coat sleeves, and gaiters. To top off the uniform, the hair had to be “clubbed,” that is, tied up in a queue stiffened with tallow and white powder. In the field the infantryman carried a load of nearly sixty pounds, comprised of his musket and bayonet, sixty rounds of ammunition, knapsack with gear and rations, blanket roll, canteen, and a one-fifth share of his tent’s equipage. With all this the soldier was expected to march and fight. Amazingly, he functioned well on most occasions, often under the roughest conditions.
The British infantryman was armed with the Brown Bess, a musket so called from its walnut stock. It weighed about ten pounds, was nearly four and a half feet long, and took a fourteen-inch socket bayonet, meaning that the sleeve of the bayonet was fitted on the end of the barrel and locked into place on a barrel stud. The smoothbore musket was .75 caliber, firing a three-quarter-ounce lead ball. Being smoothbore as well as oversized for the bullet, it was notoriously inaccurate, a factor which mattered little, since the soldier was trained to point his musket at enemy ranks only yards away and fire on command. A measure of the Brown Bess’s accuracy: its bullet had a five-foot error at 120 yards making it hopelessly inaccurate at ranges over 100 yards.4 It was loaded and fired in much the same manner as that described for the American Continental, with only minor changes in the “motions.”
The Brown Bess and the Charleville musket, as well as flintlocks of any type, shared common defects, mostly due to their vulnerability to weather. A strong wind could blow the priming powder from the pan, and heavy rains could put an end to the firing in any battle. In addition, poor flints could be a real source of frustration. Colonel Lindsay of the 46th Foot was reacting typically when he complained indignantly against the authorities “for failing to supply every musket with the same black flint which every country gentleman in England carried in his fowling piece” (Curtis, Organization of the British Army). The American flints were consistently superior to the British, usually lasting through ten times as many firings.
Despite its shortcomings, the musket and its bayonet continued to dominate eighteenth-century tactics, having replaced the unwieldy combinations of arquebus and pike in European warfare. The British army’s tactics in the Revolutionary War were, in the minds of British officers, simply a logical extension of those that had governed warfare on European battlefields for generations. In such set-piece battles, highly trained opposing infantry—in shoulder-to-shoulder lines three ranks deep—advanced at the quick step to confront each other at an effective range of less than a hundred yards. What took place then has been largely unappreciated by Americans, thus lending credence to the fantasy of the rifle’s superiority over the musket in battle. In actuality this climax of the eighteenth-century battle was essentially a contest to deliver as many bullets as possible in the shortest time, with massed volleys. Rapidity of fire, not accuracy, was of the essence. Other factors being equal, then, the troops with superior fire discipline were bound to win the contest. A continuous fire—frequently a series of rolling platoon volleys—was exchanged at a rate of three to five rounds a minute until one side showed signs of breaking, at which time its fire slackened or its thinned ranks began to waver or disintegrate. At this time the commanders on the side that had gained fire superiority would order a bayonet charge, which almost always decided the day. This kind of intense firefight, with its requisite dependence on fire discipline, was the essence of the tactical art that American leaders and troops had to learn the hard way: They had to become so trained and disciplined that they could continue to load and fire, almost as automatons, while standing fast and taking their losses until they could make their enemy break or give way, and then follow up with the bayonet. It was not until after the winter of 1777-78, after three years of bitter experience, that the lesson began to take hold, bolstered later by the instruction of professional advisers like von Steuben.
Another operational factor that deserves emphasis was the nature of the American terrain. The battles of the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) in Europe had been fought, like countless others on the Continent, on open, level ground where massed musketry could come into full play. When the British in America could fight pitched battles on such terrain, their tactical system resulted in victories such as Long Island, Brandywine, and Camden. Conversely, when rugged or heavily wooded terrain made it impossible to bring the full weight of British firepower to bear, the results were British defeats such as Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights.
THIS BOOK IS NOT CONCERNED with stereotyped battles. On the contrary, it seeks to refute the delusion that the British army did nothing but line up in rows and advance in parade formation, while the Americans hid behind bushes and trees and potted the redcoats. On the contrary, as the battles that follow will show, the combat actions in our Revolutionary War exhibited a remarkable diversity.
1. A picture on my wall shows a 1781 New Jersey infantry officer looking very natty in a dark blue coat with yellow facings and a silver epaulet on his left shoulder; things were evidently looking better in that last year of fighting. The officer carries a spontoon (a light pike about seven feet long that was a weapon as well as a badge of rank), as did the junior officers of most infantry companies. In some instances the spontoon might be replaced with a fusil (a light musket), as was often the case with British subalterns.
2. The British continued to use their three-ranked formation as prescribed in the Manual of 1764. It might seem that three ranks would increase firepower by 50 percent over the two-rank formation. Apparently the theory did not hold up in practice. In fact, it continued to raise controversy for several generations. Marshal Saint-Cyr of the French army went so far as to declare “that one-quarter of combat losses were due to wounds inflicted by the third rank upon the first two” (Robert S. Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare [New York: Columbia University Press, 1957], 311). And “Napoleon, after grumbling for years about the uselessness of a third rank, finally abolished it in 1813 at Leipzig” (Brig. Gen. Vincent J. Espito and Col. John Robert Elting, A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars [New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964]. Finally, in the British army Sir John Moore’s experiments resulted in making the two-rank line acceptable for British infantry; so with Wellington in the Peninsula and for the rest of the nineteenth century the British had their famed “thin red line.”
3. It is given its due treatment in the chapter on Kings Mountain.
4. Major George Hanger, Tarleton’s second in command of the British Legion, wrote after the war that “a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him” (Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America).