Fusiliers (62 page)

218 ‘
Dozens of sick men were that day draped on to wagons
’: the dispatch of the sick is mentioned by Calvert’s journal,
CHT
, 9/102.

— ‘
the most rebellious and inveterate that I have met
’: Cornwallis to Balfour, 3 October 1780,
TNA: PRO
30/11/81.

— ‘
Stephen Guyon of the
23rd
was highly commended
’: some details are in Banastre Tarleton,
A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and
1781
in the
Southern Provinces of North America
, London 1781, others from Calvert.

219 ‘
a frontier war such as we have
’: Balfour to Lewis, 17 January 1781,
LOC
.

— ‘
the general told his officers … that a large corps had been embarked
’: Calvert.

220 ‘
you must send a packet with five hundred men
’: Balfour to Lewis, 24 October note,
LOC
.

— ‘
a series of operations to secure the lower part of the Santee River
’: details of the supply problems and Balfour’s measures can be found in files
TNA: PRO
30/11/81–83.

— ‘
No sooner do I find myself under difficulties
’: Cornwallis to Balfour, 17 November 1780,
TNA: PRO
30/11/82.

— ‘
Our troops get healthier every day
’: ibid.

221 ‘
the
23rd
had received their new uniforms some weeks earlier
’: Calvert’s journal,
CHT
, 9/102, has details of the new clothing he received for his company on 28September 1780.

— ‘
I saw this morning the parade
’: Cornwallis to Balfour, 18November 1780, in
TNA: PRO
30/11/82. The passage gives an interesting indicator of how highly Cornwallis rated the 23rd, despite his
amour
propre
for the 33rd.

— ‘
an unpleasant message, I by no means wish to deliver
’: Balfour to Lewis, the 24 October note on the 15 October letter (
LOC
).

— ‘
The most earnest desire for a forward movement
’: Balfour to Cornwallis, 5 November 1780. This is quite the best among Balfour’s many reports to Cornwallis, including strategic insights and rapier-like dissection of the loyalist militia’s weaknesses. It is in
TNA: PRO
30/11/4.

222 ‘
Some recruits arrived – just twenty for the 23rd
’: 2,372 recruits reached New York according to a letter of 30 October 1780 in
PRO TNA: CO
5/100. It appears that all of the 23rd’s quota and most of the 33rd’s were sent down to Charleston, arriving with the main convoy on 13 December.

— ‘
We must begin our operations by driving Gates
’: Cornwallis to Balfour, 30 November 1780,
TNA: PRO
30/11/82.

— ‘
Balfour was delighted to report the arrival of a convoy
’: Balfour to Cornwallis, 14 December 1780,
TNA: PRO
30/11/4.

223 ‘
I got back last night with my heart so strongly impressed
’: Balfour to Cornwallis, 29 December 1780,
TNA: PRO
30/11/4.

224 ‘
Everybody is a general
’: Gates to Henry Knox, 7 December 1780, in Greene (ed. Showman: the events of late 1780 are dealt with in vol. VI and early 1781 in vol. VII).

— ‘
L[or]d Cornwallis has a much greater force
’: ibid. Greene’s cautious letters, and gloomy assessments, offer a valuable lesson in the dangers of abusing historical hindsight about Cornwallis’s decision to fight in North Carolina.

— ‘
If Lord Cornwallis knows his true interest he will pursue our army
’: this revealing statement came a little later, on 5 February in a letter to Isaac Huger (in Greene, ed. Showman), but is relevant enough in considering the start of the campaign.

225 ‘
be hung without judge or jury as an example to the rest
’: Greene, to Major Lee, 27 August 1780 (ed. Showman).

— ‘
Greene waited for one of them, Thomas Anderson
’: details of this case in a paper dated 4 January 1781 (in vol. VII of Showman).

— ‘
fall back upon the flank or into the rear of the enemy
’: Greene’s orders (ed. Showman).

— ‘
On 8 January, the
23rd
Fusiliers struck camp … marched off at a blistering
pace
’: details of the regiment’s marches in this campaign from Calvert’s journal.

226 ‘
came in with accounts of having been totally defeated
’: ibid.

227 ‘
Tarleton’s defeat
’: Tarleton’s own History attempted to place blame for the defeat on others. So disgusted were the officers of the 71st by being blamed, that one of their officer, Roderick Mackenzie published a counterblast,
Strictures of Lieut. Colonel Tarleton’s History
, London 1787. Mackenzie makes the valid point that if the 71st were advancing in too thin a formation Tarleton ought to have closed them up.

— ‘
The late affair has almost broke my heart
’: Cornwallis to Rawdon, 21January 1781,
TNA: PRO
30/11/84.

— ‘
which is intended for the conveyance of their medicine chest
’: General Order of 2 January 1781. The GOs for the Carolina campaign can be found in A. R. Newsome’s article.

228 ‘
negroes and horses
’: General Order of 26 January 1781.

— ‘
When the redcoats came into view, early in the morning on 1 February
’: this account is based mainly on those of three Welch Fusiliers: Calvert’s journal, Lamb, and a journal by Thomas Saumarez, quoted in Cannon’s history of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Unfortunately, Cannon appears to have lost the original of this valuable document, since the later history by Cary and McCance quotes the same passages of Saumarez and subsequent enquiries have failed to trace the journal. Tarleton, in his
History
, erroneously places the 23rd at another crossing point of the Catawba, under Colonel Webster. Probably Tarleton was referring to the 33rd but was confused.

228 ‘
Its waters, swollen by recent rains
’: Saumarez journal (Cannon).

229 ‘
The soldiers initially were fed from bags of cornmeal
’: the preparation of the meal was described by Charles Stedman, Cornwallis’s commissary, who later wrote
History of the Origin, Progress and Termination of the
American War
, 2 vols, London 1794. The rasping of corn is mentioned in General Orders and by Lamb.

230 ‘
My mess mates and I made two meals a day
’: Shaw of the 33rd.

— ‘
It is a pleasing sight to see a column arrive at its halting ground
’: Lamb, quoted by Hagist in
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research
(forthcoming).

231 ‘
their liberality in furnishing us so abundantly
’: Shaw.

232 ‘
The smallest check to any of his detachments
’: O’Hara to Grafton, 1 November 1780.

— ‘
a style that must ever do the greatest honour to Lord Cornwallis’s military
reputation
’: O’Hara to Grafton, 20 April 1781, as above.

— ‘
we marched for the most part both day and night
’: Seymour journal, Force Papers,
LOC
.

233 ‘
patriotic exhortations and executions
’: Seymour gives a very good idea of this, noting the execution of a deserter hung from a tree on 1 January and one of William Washington’s dragoons shot for desertion on 4 January 1781. Greene’s entry into South Carolina later in 1781 was marked by large numbers of executions, but this will be dealt with in its proper place.

— ‘
Greene’s march or rather flight from the Catawba
’: O’Hara to Grafton. O’Hara is so disillusioned by the loyalists that he does not even mention the Pyle disaster described later in this chapter, a measure of the Guards officer’s prejudices in this matter.

— ‘
soldiers being taken by the enemy
’: General Order 22 February 1781 in Newsome.

234 ‘
to repress the meditated rising of the loyalists
’:
The Revolutionary War
Memoirs of General Henry Lee
, edited by Robert E. Lee, 1869.

— ‘
Lieutenant Manning of Lee’s Legion supplied another version
’: Manning’s version is recounted in
Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America
, by Alexander Garden, Charleston 1822. Garden interviewed Manning in later life. This version avoids Lee’s self serving claims about Pyle’s men starting the fight and suggests that Greene sent them there to prevent the loyalists rising and that murdering them was, in any case, justified as retaliation for Tarleton’s actions at Waxhaws.

— ‘
Ninety or so of Pyle’s loyalists were cut down
’: a modern calculation by John Buchanan in his
The Road to Guilford Courthouse
, New York 1997.

235 ‘
It has had a very happy effect
’: Greene to Thomas Jefferson, 29 February 1781 (ed. Showman).

— ‘
300 of our friends … were every man scalped
’: ‘letter from Capt C[hampagne] of the 23rd Regiment, now serving under Lord Cornwallis to his relation Lieutenant C [hampagne] on the recruiting service at Doncaster, dated Wilmington April 17, 1781’, printed in
The Leeds
Intelligencer
, 26June 1781. Champagne’s excessive Tory language in this letter suggests to me that it may have been written for publication. Unfortunately for us, I have not been able to find other letters from him to his brother or the original of this one.

236 ‘
The encounter between Tarleton’s Legion
’: this is described by Lee in his
Memoirs
, Tarleton ditto and Cornwallis in his dispatch (in Ross).

237
‘made a push for the country’
: Shaw’s memoir. He calls his friend Tattesdell, but it is clearly Tattersall, in
TNA: PRO WO
12/3296 although those rolls have him desert later. This may simply have resulted from confusion as to whether Tattersall should be returned as a prisoner (and therefore eligble to continue receiving pay) or not.

239 ‘
One thing is pretty certain
’: Greene to Lee, 9 March 1781 (ed. Showman).

— ‘
It appears to me that his Lordship and army begin to possess disagreeable
apprehensions
’: while it is impossible to prove with forensic accuracy that Lee formed these views after talking to Shaw and Tattersall, the circumstances fit exactly, for in this letter to Greene (11 March, ed. Showman) he refers to sending two prisoners to the general on the 10th. In Shaw’s memoir, he says that he and Tattersall were examined by Greene on 11 March, having been sent to headquarters by Lee.

240 ‘
a defeat would have been attended with the total destruction
’, Tarleton’s
History
.

— ‘
The ground dropped quite steeply
’: many details of the field of Guilford come from personal observation. I am grateful to Nancy Stewart and John Durham for guidance during my visit to the National Battlefield Park there. I am grateful to them too for providing copies of many accounts relative to the battle, notably Houston, Tucker, Howard and Slade referred to below.

241 ‘
Colonel Webster moved to the left of the road
’: battle deployments are fully explained in Stedman’s History.

242 ‘
field lately ploughed
’: Saumarez journal, in Cannon.

— ‘
Come on my brave Fusiliers!
’: Lamb.

— ‘
They instantly returned it and did not give the enemy time
’: Calvert’s journal,
CHT
, 9/102.

243 ‘The men run to choose their trees’: the accounts of Houston, Marshal and Slade are all contained in a digest of American primary accounts collated from various sources by the National Parks Service visitor centre at the battlesite entitled,
Key Original Sources: Outline for the Battle of Guilford
Courthouse
.

243 ‘
Webster’s brigade had lost some of its order
’: the movement to the left by the 33rd is described by Stedman and others, Saumarez of the 23rd talks about them having to go around the ‘brushwood’ obstruction.

— ‘
After “severe firing”, the Virginians began to break
’: Calvert’s journal.

— ‘
Holcombe’s Regiment and ours broke off
’: letter of Major St George Tucker to his wife, 18 March 1781. His papers are kept in the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg
VA
.

245 ‘
As they pressed on, Kirkwood’s riflemen started to pick them off
’: Seymour’s journal, Force Papers,
LOC
, makes clear that Kirkwood’s Marylanders and Lynch’s Virginian riflemen were principally engaged at this point and charged after the 33rd when they retreated. Lieutenant Colonel John Howard of the 1st Maryland Regiment, in a letter many years after the battle to John Marshal, suggests Webster’s first attack ran out of steam, ‘he did not press us hard, nor did we defeat or charge upon him’.

— ‘
pouring in a very heavy fire on them
’: Seymour describes this reception in his journal.

— ‘
impatient to signalise themselves
’: Stedman, using language almost identical to that of Cornwallis in his dispatch. We may see this as coded criticism of the rashness of the 2nd Guards’ advance.

— ‘
at the
2nd
Regiment, which immediately gave way
’: Howard to Marshal again.

246 ‘
The conflict between the… Guards and the first regiment of Marylanders
’: Nathaniel Slade of the NC militia.

— ‘
charged them so furiously that they either killed or wounded almost every
man
’: Seymour journal, Force Papers,
LOC
.

— ‘
the enemy’s cavalry was soon repulsed by a well-directed fire
’: this is from Cornwallis’s own dispatch (in Ross). Many accounts of the battle have Cornwallis ordering MacLeod quite deliberately to fire into the melee of the 2nd Guards, Marylanders and Washington’s cavalry. The sole basis from any participant for this claim is a line from Lee’s
Memoir
that the British artillery, ‘opened upon friends as well as foes… every ball levelled at [Washington and Howard] must pass through the flying Guards’. This was steadily embroidered over the years by American writers, for example, Eli W. Carruthers in
The Old North State
(first published 1854 and 1856 but since re-published by the Guilford Genealogical Society in 1985) who claims that O’Hara remonstrated with Cornwallis not to do such a thing. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these myths, that started appearing in early nineteenth-century American histories of these events, were intended to show what a ruthless character Cornwallis was. Although Lee was not present on the sector of the field where this incident allegedly happened, I do find it credible that the British artillery fired through ‘the flying Guards’, i.e., fugitives running or stumbling back from the melee atop the hill. However, parties of unfortunates meandering about were a normal part of any battlefield at this time, and MacLeod could reasonably have engaged Washington without a significant danger of cutting many men down. The position of the guns should cast further doubt on the idea that MacLeod fired into the melee – since the battery was far from the hilltop (200–300 yards when the optimum range for grape from MacLeod’s little three pounders might have been 100–150 yards, i.e., as Washington’s men were coming down the ridge towards them, as Cornwallis’s dispatch suggests) and it is likely that the hand-to-hand fighting was obscured by the brow of that feature. Of the invented disagreement between O’Hara and Cornwallis, there is no evidence in various letters from the two men, even though O’Hara writes to Grafton of the British line being beaten at various points during the action.

246 ‘
The
23rd
formed … with several dozen men
’: Calvert’s journal.

247 ‘
Cornwallis’s casualties had been shockingly high
’: return in
TNA: PRO
30/11/103.

— ‘
unfortunate
’: Greene used this word in orders on the 16th (ed. Showman).

— ‘
deserted the most advantageous post I ever saw
’: Greene to Morgan, 20March 1781 (ed. Showman).

— ‘
nothing could behave better than the 23rd
’: Cornwallis to Balfour, 5 April 1781,
TNA: PRO
30/11/85.

— ‘
Lord Cornwallis desires the officers and Soldiers
’: Calvert’s journal.

248 ‘
No zeal or courage is equal to the constant exertions
’: O’Hara to Grafton, 20 April 1781 (in Rogers), a phenomenally interesting account of the North Carolina campaign.

— ‘
remained on the very ground on which it had been fought
’: ibid.

— ‘
For Surgeon Hill and his mates tip-toeing between the groaning bodies
’: his report, giving details of all the injuries to the men left behind is in
TNA: PRO
30/11/5.

249 ‘
Thomas Parks, a private from Birmingham
’: details of his wound and service, Discharge Papers,
TNA: PRO WO
97/431.

250 ‘
the army was barefooted and in the utmost want of necessaries
’: Cornwallis to Balfour, 5 April 1781,
TNA: PRO
30/11/85.

251 ‘
I am quite tired of marching about the country
’: Cornwallis to Phillips, 10 April 1781, in Ross.

— ‘
If our plan is to be defensive
’: ibid.

— ‘
the attempt is exceedingly hazardous
’: Cornwallis to Phillips, 24 April 1781,
TNA: PRO
30/11/85

— ‘
The campaign in North Carolina had ground down Earl Cornwallis’s
army
’: figures from
TNA: PRO
30/11/5.

252 ‘
Here has been the field for the exercise of genius
’: Greene to Joseph Reed, 18 March 1781 (ed. Showman).