“long, obstinate, and bloody” 337
received a gunshot wound to his right hand which would eventually
entail amputation of his thumb and index finger).
10
Cornwallis had three 3-pounders stationed on the road, and at
about 1:00 pm they started a lively exchange with the two 6-pounders
positioned in the center of the North Carolina line. The 1,000-yard
British front, consisting of the Regiment von Bose, the 71st, 23rd,
and 33rd Foot, began their steady advance across the 400 yards that
separated them from the first rank of militia. Greene, as had Morgan at
Cowpens, asked for two solid volleys from his North Carolinians and
had warned the Virginians behind them not to be panicked when the
first line retired. As a result of the militia’s opening volley, according to
Captain Dugald Stewart, “one half of the Highlanders dropped on that
spot.”
11
William Montgomery, a North Carolinian, recorded that the
British fallen looked like “the scattering stalks of a wheat field, when
the harvest man passed over it with his cradle.”
12
Undeterred, the British line moved “in excellent order in a smart
run,” said Sergeant Roger Lamb, and “arrived within forty yards of the
enemy’s line [where] it was perceived that their whole line had their
arms presented, and resting on a rail fence . . . They were taking aim
with the nicest precision.”
13
It created on both sides, added Lamb with
wonderful understatement, “a most anxious suspense.” In fact it was
the white-hot core of the eighteenth-century battle experience. In all
probability both sides volleyed (“dreadful was the havoc on both sides,”
observed Lamb), and the British charged with the bayonet. The militia
broke and ran. It was, said “Light Horse Harry” Lee, an “unaccountable
panic, for not a man of the corps had been killed or even wounded,”
which is difficult to square with Lamb’s “dreadful havoc.”
At this point Lynch’s Virginian riflemen began enfilading the
left flank of the 33rd, which caused the British left wing to skew left
in response. Similarly on the right, the collapse of the militia forced
Campbell and Lee to retire and pulled after them the von Bose and 1st
Guards. It would take them off into their own side-battle, depriving
Cornwallis of over a quarter of his fighting strength. These diversions
meant that the British center split and Cornwallis moved the 2nd
Guards and Guards’ grenadiers to fill the void and sent the jägers and