Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

In Blenheim Palace, that lumpy and unlovely McMansion, there is

a series of tapestries commissioned to glorify the military career of John

Churchill, first duke of Marlborough. In one, the victorious general is,

of course, front and center. Dressed in his great brocaded frock coat

and full bagwig, he sits confidently astride his magnificent steed while

pointing magisterially, if a little vaguely, to his battalions battling it out

below on the Flemish plain. Tucked away in the bottom right-hand

corner lies a man as dead as a doorknob but done nicely in perspective,

his head to the viewer. He was a cavalryman or perhaps a mounted

officer—whether French or English, whether friend or foe, hardly

matters now. His wig, that essential mark of the gentleman, has fallen off

to uncover, in shocking revelation, his shaved head. Under the coiffure

lay the skull. It seems to me the most poignant detail of the whole heroic

schema. It is warfare stripped of grandeur and grandiloquence. The

image of that fallen soldier has guided not only the motivation but also

the method of this book.

Patriot Battles is dedicated to a deceptively simple objective: to take

off the wig and other accumulated finery that a couple of centuries and

more of historiography has piled on, and look the war in the eye. Who

fought? Why did they fight? How did they sustain themselves? With

what did they fight? How did they fight? These are questions I have tried

to address by deconstructing the traditional narrative battle histories as

well as drawing on a range of specialist studies. Field Marshal Lord



INTRODUCTION

introduction xi

Wavell, writing to the great military theoretician and historian Basil

Liddell Hart, put his finger on it: “I think I should concentrate almost

entirely on the ‘actualities of war’—the effects of tiredness, hunger, fear,

lack of sleep, weather. . . . The principles of strategy and tactics, and

the logistics of war are really absurdly simple: it is the actualities that

make war so complicated and so difficult, and are usually so neglected

by historians.” As John Keegan has so brilliantly demonstrated: God is

in the details and the physical realities illuminate the larger picture.

My interest in the War of Independence started with a gentle

paddling in the warm shallows of popular history. It was cozy and

reassuring. For example, British soldiers were often characterized

as criminals who had been beaten into submission and were led by

sluggard, doltish, and venal commanders. The Americans were lean

and freethinking, their commanders, by comparison with their sclerotic

British counterparts, wonderfully gifted amateurs, fresh, imaginative,

and free of petty squabbles. Washington emulated the noble Roman

Fabius, a patriot soldier who chose to run away in order to “live to fight

another day.” Nimble partisan tactics rather than the tedious formality

of an old European style of combat had won the war. The conflict had

been a great rallying of popular will and determination: it was the first

People’s War. But as one got into the weft and weave of the war, it

became clear that it had become trapped in amber: embalmed over

the centuries by the slow accretion of national mythology and popular

history.

Eighteenth-century warfare seems exotically formalized, strangely

balletic, and “unreal” by modern standards. Certainly, the limitations of

the primary weapons—musket and cannon—imposed on the soldiers a

complicated ritual of arms drill. These “evolutions,” as they were called,

seem laughable or weird to those of us who have been fed on the wham-

bam action of special-forces computer simulations and the techno-

pornography of Hollywood movies. But there was nothing laughable

about the realities of the combat of those times. The very limitations of

weaponry (a common musket was fairly useless at ranges of more than

sixty yards or so) imposed a shape on battle that demanded the highest

degree of determination and courage on the part of the foot soldiers at

introduction xii

the sharp end. To march to within, say, forty yards of an enemy, receive

his fire, and then close in for the kill took a prodigious amount of nerve,

as one of the great French military theoreticians of the eighteenth

century, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert, emphasized:

The kind of soldier who acts only under pressure will be frightened

to see the enemy come so near, and he will often seek safety in flight

without attempting to defend himself. The closer you approach the

enemy the more fearsome you become, and a coward who will fire

on a brave man at one hundred paces, will not dare so much as aim

at him at close range.

The terrifying proximity so characteristic of eighteenth-century battle

was described by Sergeant Roger Lamb of the 23rd Foot (Royal Welch

Fusiliers) at the battle of Guilford Courthouse on 15 March 1781.

When the British infantry approached within forty yards of the ranks

of the North Carolina militia, who were resolutely ensconced behind

a fence, “it was perceived,” reported the understandably dismayed

Lamb, “that their whole line had their arms presented, and resting on

a rail fence

. . . . They were taking aim with the nicest [“nice” meant

“exact” in the eighteenth century] precision

. . . . At this awful moment

a general pause took place; both parties surveyed each other with the

most anxious suspense.”

Urged on by 23rd’s Lieutenant Colonel James

Webster, the British broke the spell and charged into the militia’s fire.

“Dreadful was the havoc on both sides,” says Lamb.

Dreadful indeed, but nothing compared with the Civil War. Including

the mortally wounded (but excluding deaths from disease), about 7,000

Americans were killed in battle during the War of Independence. The

British lost approximately 4,000 killed in action; the Hessians 1,200. By

comparison, over the course of the Civil War the Union suffered about

110,000 battle deaths; the Confederacy 94,000. At Antietam alone (generally

reckoned to be the single bloodiest day in American military history) 26,000

men became casualties whereas the butcher’s bill for the bloodiest battles

of Washington’s war rarely exceeded 1,500 killed and wounded for both

sides combined. For example, at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, one of the most

introduction xiii

sanguine of the whole war, 140 Americans were killed and 271 wounded.

Britain lost 226 dead and 828 wounded, for a combined total of 1,465.

The Cinderella relationship of the War of Independence to the

Civil War is a reflection, to some extent, of our taste for the red meat

of military history. Big body counts may sell books, movies, and TV

documentaries, but they should not obscure the often brutal realities

of eighteenth-century warfare. For individual units the casualty levels

could be fearful. At the battle of Brooklyn on 27 August 1776, for

example, the 400-strong Maryland Brigade left 256 dead on the field

after their heroic forlorn-hope counterattack against overwhelming

odds. Lieutenant Frederick MacKenzie, a British officer at Bunker’s

Hill, reported that “most of our Grenadiers and Light-infantry, the

moment of presenting themselves, lost three-fourths, and many nine-

tenths, of their men. Some had only eight or nine a company left [a

company would have had approximately sixty officers and men]; some

only three, four, and five.”

The 62nd Foot, one of the regiments in the

center of the British line at the battle of Freeman’s Farm (the first battle

of Saratoga) on 19 September 1777, “. . . had scarce 10 men a company

left,” recorded Lieutenant William Digby. The regiment went from

350 officers and men to 60—a staggering loss of 83 percent.

A fortuitous collision of past and present added an extra dimension

and relevance to the research for Patriot Battles and made me think

about the “uses of history.” The invasion of Iraq unrolled in March

2003. The two wars, separated by centuries, immediately set up a

dialogue of comparison and cross reference: the past illuminated by the

present; the present made more comprehensible by the past. For some

the comparison was both good and bad, depending on what benefit they

sought to extract. For example, the estimable David McCullough (who

had published 1776 in 2005, a study of one of the most difficult years of

the war as far as the patriot cause was concerned), politely but perhaps

a tad testily rejected the notion put to him by a left-leaning radio talk-

show host that there might be some connection between, say, the partisan

tactics of 1776 involving assassination of loyalist opposition leaders, the

destruction of loyalist property, and the general suppression of pro-

Crown sympathizers and the similar tactics of “insurrectionists” in Iraq.

introduction xiv

Not only was the specific analogy incorrect, insisted Mr. McCullough,

but it was also intellectually inadmissible, even dangerous, to apply the

lessons of history to contemporary events.

President Bush, however, an admirer of Mr. McCullough’s

book, seemed to suggest by association that he was in the same tight

spot as George Washington had been in 1776 and, by emulating the

perseverance and determination of the first commander in chief, would

pull the nation out of the black hole of Iraq into which he had led

it. What President Bush failed to see was that he had much more in

common with George III than with George Washington.

One of the leading historians of the War of Independence has called

the comparison with the Vietnam war, for example, “overwrought,”

and there is an understandable instinct to insulate the sanctity of the

great war of national liberation from any association with some of the

more “awkward” periods of American history. But the comparisons are

illuminating because colonial wars share a basic architecture that arises

when an occupying power far from the mother country tries to suppress

a popular uprising. Also, viewing the War of Independence through

the lens of other imperialist wars, particularly America’s involvement

in Vietnam and Iraq, helps rescue it from the Disney World of history

to which it has been consigned. By looking in the mirror of its own

history, perhaps the nation can see its face more clearly, warts and all,

and its own recent history may help it understand the dilemma in which

Britain found herself in America almost two and a half centuries ago.

With the war in Iraq unfolding as I researched the long-ago

conflict, it was impossible not to be struck by similarities. For example,

the occupying power routinely constructs the necessary rhetoric of

justification. It is a combination of “we are here to safeguard your best

interests/we are here to protect the rule of law/we are here to protect

the majority from the bullying of the insurgent minority.” These are

the fig leaves of moral respectability intended to mask the strategic and

economic benefits to the occupiers. Flowing from this was an over

optimistic expectation from “friends” (that is, those presumed loyal to

the occupying power). For example, Britain’s strategy, particularly in

the South, was built on what proved to be an unrealistic assumption of

introduction xv

loyalist support. As with America in Vietnam and Iraq, the occupying

power could neither mobilize loyalists effectively nor protect adequately

those who did commit themselves. The issue is further complicated by

the disdain the occupiers often have for their loyalist supporters. British

regulars in North America were haughty about “provincial” troops

whom they considered second-rate and undependable in battle—an

attitude not a million miles away from that of the American military

for the ARVN or the Iraqi army.

The armies of George Washington and George Bush also share

some characteristics. They were both technically volunteer forces, but

in reality economic hardship and the chance of some betterment, be it

a $10 bounty and a suit of clothes for one, or the chance of a $40,000

enlistment bonus and a grant of up to $70,000 for a college education for

another, swelled the ranks with those from the less privileged members

of their society. After the first heady year of the war against the British,

during which there was something approaching popular participation,

the rage militaire subsided and the burden of the fighting fell on a small

cadre of young men. It was they who endured the appalling privations

of, for example, the bitter winters of 1777–78 at Valley Forge and 1779–

80 at Morristown, where they were scandalously abandoned by the

broad swath of Americans for whom they fought and died. Similarly in

modern America. The Humvee in the shopping mall is a safer option

than the under-armored Humvee in Iraq, and flag-waving in the gated

community does not require a bulletproof vest. Certainly, any idea of

sharing the burden more equitably was as politically unacceptable in

eighteenth-century as in twenty-first-century America.

For the British army in America there was a massive logistical

burden that constricted its strategic options. Unable to secure sufficient

supplies locally (because of either scarcity or the relatively efficient denial

of access by the patriots) it was dependent on the United Kingdom for

almost all of its food, equipment, clothing, and reinforcements. Foraging,

nonetheless, was a constant and pressing necessity. For example, each of

the draft horses on which the army depended for transportation needed

twenty pounds of hay and nine of oats each day, and the bulkiness of

forage made it prohibitively expensive to ship transatlantically. The

introduction xvi

army “was a ship; where it moved in power it commanded, but around

it was the hostile sea, parting in front but closing in behind, and always

probing for signs of weakness. Whereas a defeated American army

could melt back into the countryside from whence it came, a British

force so circumscribed was likely to be totally lost. Its only hope was to

fall back on a fortified port”

—a description that could just as well have

been applied to American troops in Vietnam and Iraq.

It was an isolation not only of physical but also psychological space.

The occupiers were aliens in the culture of the occupied. They often

could not tell the difference between friend and foe. Their blunderings

alienated potential allies and fortified their enemies. The fear of their

isolation and vulnerability sapped their strength and set the hair trigger

of overreaction. And as the fear grew it emboldened their adversaries:

as true for the British in America as it was for Americans in Vietnam

and Iraq.

As antidote, British commanders in insurgent America constantly

demanded more manpower, but numbers alone could not solve the

problem. The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de

Vergennes, saw it clearly: “It will be in vain for the English to multiply

their forces there, no longer can they bring that vast continent back to

dependence by force of arms.” Even within the loyalist press it found

an echo: “. . . at more than 3,000 miles’ distance, against an enemy we

now find active, able, and resolute . . . in a country where fastness grows

upon fastness, and labyrinth upon labyrinth; where a check is a defeat,

and defeat is ruin. It is a war of absurdity and madness.”

For Lord

George Germain in eighteenth-century Britain, as for Donald Rumsfeld

in twenty-first-century America, requests for more men and resources

were often denied. Each had to juggle local logistical demands with the

myriad others pressing in on an imperial world power. The manager

could not also be the magician.

Tactically the War of Independence was a little schizophrenic. In the

South, particularly, it was characterized by classic partisan warfare: hit-

and-run, ambush, retreat-and-counterattack, isolate-and-overwhelm,

interdict supplies (tactics, incidentally and ironically, informed by the

Indians’ “skulking way of war”—ironically because the victorious

introduction xvii

patriots saw off the Indians in double-quick time and gobbled up their

lands) together with very effective political warfare that robbed the

occupier of support. Like the picador, it goaded the enraged bull into

suicidal attacks like that at Guilford Courthouse which weakened it

sufficiently for the ritualized coup de grâce (Yorktown). All of this falls

fairly neatly into the traditional strategy and tactics of colonial war.

What does not fit quite so easily is the fact that Washington did

everything in his power to fight the war on European lines. He was

uncomfortable with and dismissive of the partisan tradition. Those

Pennsylvanian and Virginian riflemen were, in his estimation (and he

was certainly not alone in his view), a liability. They were unreliable,

uncouth, ill disciplined, and tactically fragile. They offended his

patrician sensibilities and his military instincts. What he wanted, what

he pressed Congress for, was a proper army, a good foursquare, stand-

up-and-blast-away army like the British. In this he was a traditionalist

and military conservative.

But conservative does not always equate with caution (as the George

W. Bush administration can testify). Although history tends to depict

Washington as an overwhelmingly defensive commander, avoiding

battle at all costs, a good case can be made for the opposite. He was an

instinctive fighter. On the battlefield he was tactically highly aggressive,

sometimes recklessly so. One thinks of his hair-raising gambles at the

battle of Brooklyn and at the second battle of Trenton, where his army

could have been destroyed comprehensively (whether that would have

ended the rebellion is another matter), or his eagerness to give battle at

the Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth Courthouse.

It was not the skulking marksman in the fringed hunting shirt that

did for the British. The battles that gutted them were formal affairs:

Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights (the two battles of Saratoga),

Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, and the siege of Yorktown. The naval

battle of the Chesapeake Capes, which proved fatal to the British cause,

was also fought à la mode.

Washington had, from his early days as colonel of Virginia’s state

troops, and as a respected member of the American oligarchy, a deep

respect for European, and specifically British, military tradition. He

introduction xviii

wanted to fight a war in a style that would do credit to his class (with an

army whose organization mirrored European social distinctions) and

his country, and he wanted to fight it in a way he thought best suited

to delivering grievous body blows to the British army. Washington

despised the idea of sneaking in the back door and kicking the British

out of the front. He preferred to come boldly in at the front and kick

them out the back.

In general, the war was not revolutionary in any military sense or,

one could argue, in any social one, either. On the one hand there were

no technological or tactical innovations on the battlefield; and on the

other, no restructuring of wealth or power within American society.

An analogy might be that in a hostile corporate takeover an American

management group replaced a British one that had become redundant

and expensive and no longer added corporate value. Both regimes were

oligarchic, but homegrown was preferable. It seemed to me, therefore,

that the phrase “War of Independence” is a more accurate description

of events than the “Revolutionary War.”

The conservatism goes further. At some basic tactical level,

eighteenth-century warfare shared a structure and dynamic with ancient

and medieval warfare. All three were based on the phalanx: a compact

body of men acting with strict discipline to deliver a heavy blow at close

quarters. Battles in the different periods shared a shape. There was

usually a standoff preliminary softening-up missile barrage (spears and

arrows in earlier times; muskets and cannon later). This was galling but

could be minimized by charging across the final 150 yards or so to come

to grips with the enemy.

In the ancient world the close work was done

with thrusting spear and short stabbing sword (80 percent of deaths in

Greek battles came from thrusting spear wounds).

In the eighteenth

century it was either close-up volleying of musketry or the bayonet

charge. Whatever the differences in weaponry, some basics were shared.

The body of men had to be compact to deliver the maximum weight of

lethality, and it had to cover ground fast in order to get through the

killing zone of incoming missiles as quickly as possible. Whether it was

a phalanx or a regiment, it depended on what can be characterized as

a “crystalline” formation: tight, coordinated, interdependent. If that

introduction xix

molecular structure was breached, penetrated, or otherwise thrown off

kilter, the whole entity could shatter. The Greeks called it pararrexis: the

breaking of the line and the subsequent loss of cohesion. Frederick the

Great, for example, saw the possibility of such a fracture and sought to

exploit it with oblique strikes against the flanks: a tactic that became a

staple of the great battles of the American war.

In one important sense the American War of Independence was

extra- rather than intra-revolutionary. A new player was announced in

the imperial game. The emulation of the Old World that Washington

sought would lead to a more profound and long-lasting transformation

for America than even he could have envisioned. To put an inflection

on the adage “you are what you eat,” America became what she beat.

John Adams expressed it in a slightly different way when he wrote

to an English friend in 1767: “We talk the language we have always

heard you speak.” Adams may have been alluding to such matters as the

checks and balances of parliamentarian government and the principle

of the supremacy of secular law, but there was another language, the

language of imperialism, that America adopted. As the patriot general

Nathanael Greene wrote with refreshing candor on 4 January 1776:

“Heaven hath decreed the Tottering Empire Britain to irretrievable

ruin—thanks to God since Providence hath so determined America

must raise an Empire of permanent duration.”

Prescient must have

been his middle name. The westward expansion of American colonists

Britain had sought to curb would be reversed. Similar to England’s

Highland clearances of the mid-eighteenth century, patriot America

first dealt with its indigenous population. The Indians were pushed out

and their lands expropriated, whether they had supported the cause or

not. It was the first step to much, much bigger things.

In time the great wheel of history came sweetly full circle. As

America rose to enjoy a world hegemony unparalleled in history, Britain

fell from its imperial pinnacle to become an almost Ruritanian client

nation; patronized as she had once patronized; condescended to as she

had once condescended. The claustrophobic smugness and complacent

assumption of superiority that had been the hallmarks of Britain’s

imperial ascendancy (and that had driven good republican Americans

Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

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