Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought
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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.
1
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.”
2
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.”
3
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.
4
One of the leading historians of the War of Independence has called
the comparison with the Vietnam war, for example, “overwrought,”
5
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”
6
—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.”
7
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.
8
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).
9
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.”
10
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