Fusiliers (38 page)

Cornwallis decided to pack off the sick, but they would need a strong escort if they were to get through, so the 7th, the English Fusiliers, were detached for the purpose. The general had moved back from Charlotte, a town on the North Carolina border where he found the locals ‘the most rebellious and inveterate that I have met with in this country’. This hostility had produced real difficulties in feeding the men, notwithstanding that by October all of the corn was usually harvested, and the mills working hard to make grist.

During foraging expeditions about Charlotte small parties of British troops frequently came under attack from the locals. In one action, Lieutenant Stephen Guyon of the 23rd was highly commended for holding out at Polk’s Mill, two miles from the town. Guyon and a small party of Fusiliers had thrown themselves into a strong-point,
using firing slits to engage scores of enemy militia who tried to storm the place. Guyon was another of the teenage subalterns who had sailed to America in 1779 with Calvert, the two youngsters becoming firm friends on the voyage.

Among the soldiers enfeebled by hunger as well as hard service, the sick rate had climbed. Even Cornwallis fell ill. This had caused anxiety in his army, but by the time the wagons were sent off on the 22nd, the general was recovering. Many of the officers involved in operations felt that service in the Carolinas would prove as deadly to their regiments as the Caribbean, where a couple of seasons’ fighting were enough to finish off many a toughened corps, the pallid wrecks being sent home to England to recruit. Lieutenant Colonel Balfour predicted that ‘a frontier war such as we have, and must expect to continue, will very soon in these latitudes make white flesh and blood very rare’.

Cornwallis was sufficiently worried by the withering of some of his regiments at a time when more hard fighting was in prospect that he asked for reinforcements. On the evening the sick were packed off, the general told his officers in their encampment that a large corps had been embarked from New York under Major General Alexander Leslie and was on its way to co-operate with them. His initial idea was that Leslie might go to the Cape Fear River, on the North Carolina coast, and from there inland a short way to Cross Creeks, a loyalist settlement. But Cornwallis was uncertain about how his own force might co-operate with Leslie or whether this should involve shifting the war closer to the sea, exposing such places as Camden or Ninety Six to attack if he left. His strategy for carrying the war into North Carolina had not, in late October, crystallised, but beset by so many difficulties, trying to raise his men’s morale, he chose to let the cat out of the bag that more redcoats might be on their way.

The army marched almost 50 miles after hearing this news, arriving one week later at the plantation of Winnsborough. Lieutenant Calvert had been wondering, as daydreaming men on the march do, what comforts might lie at the end of their exertions. Getting there, he noted disappointedly in his journal, that this settlement ‘consists of two hovels’. Quite quickly, though, the troops found the surrounding lands a more benign environment for their foraging expeditions than had been the case further north. ‘We frequently sent out twenty and thirty miles and once upwards of forty for forage’, wrote Calvert, ‘without any Covering Party and never were the least molested by the enemy.’

Food at least could be found in these quarters, but Cornwallis knew he must try to reduce the sickness, bring up some recruits for his regiments that had arrived in Charleston, get new uniforms (for the seasons were turning, and the men’s clothes were tattered), replenish stocks of rum, ammunition and all sorts. In short, the army would need several weeks of rest and attention to matters of supply before it would be fit to campaign again.

These problems were all multiplied by the activities of the Swamp Fox and other partisans of his ilk, particularly on the road from Charleston to Camden. Logistics were a weak suit with Cornwallis, who had come to rely largely on Balfour and the civilian commissaries. The wagons at his disposal that moved the sick down to Camden, for example, were driven by men from Ninety Six pressed into service while Balfour was in charge there. With raiding parties frequently attacking the route up from the coast, it became doubtful whether the small number of vehicles could manage the task or a large escort be assembled to protect them. Balfour, writing to a friend near the end of October, stated, ‘I have not heard from Lord Cornwallis indeed the communication is cut off, and in sending a letter safe you must send a packet with five hundred men at least as a guard.’ This last was an exaggeration, but the Commandant of Charleston understood the precariousness of this supply chain well enough to do something about it.

Early in November, Balfour directed a series of operations to secure the lower part of the Santee River. He was going to move General Cornwallis’s supplies on the first part of their journey upcountry by water. The scarce wagons could then be used to shuttle materiel to the magazines at Camden and to Winnsborough. It was his need to free the 64th Regiment for use in these operations that caused Balfour to move American prisoners on to ships in Charleston harbour. Pushing the 64th inland produced a number of skirmishes with the enemy’s raiding parties, but soon also the desired effect in opening communications to Camden.

With supplies rolling in, Cornwallis was effusive in his gratitude, writing to Balfour: ‘No sooner do I find myself under difficulties to accomplish any very important object than I am relieved by finding that you have already done it for me. You will spoil me from acting with any other person.’ Not only were stocks being replenished by mid-November, but the milder weather and plentiful food were restoring the army: ‘Our troops get healthier every day, are in high
spirits and as soon as they have got their warm clothing will be fit for any thing.’

Those steeped in the ways of military service will be reassured to learn that the men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers had already reaped dividends from having their commanding officer in charge of the port and supply matters. While the 33rd and 71st moped about in their tattered jackets, the 23rd had received their new uniforms some weeks earlier. Supplies of soap and medicines to the regiment had also been expedited. These contributed to high morale and, even during the bad days of October, the proportion of the 23rd that had fallen sick was notably lower than in other regiments. During these days after Camden, the 23rd’s surgeon left to work in the General Hospital in Charleston and Serjeant Lamb did temporary duty in charge of the sick. Even so, the Fusiliers maintained fine morale and turnout.

Watching the 23rd turn out in formation to begin the day, early on 18 November, Cornwallis was deeply impressed. He knew how much Balfour would like to read about it, so set pen to paper, averring, ‘I saw this morning the parade of the R [oyal]. W [elch]. Fuziliers and I assure you they are in great order and the most willing and good humoured people in all hardships.’

Balfour, though, was uneasy that when his regiment and the rest at Winnsborough were ready to go, they would be hurled northward once more, while South Carolina sank into complete disorder. Late in October he had still been reluctant to share these thoughts fully with Cornwallis, telling a friend that his views would make ‘an unpleasant message, I by no means wish to deliver, as I am not ordered so to do’. But the earl
had
asked Balfour for military advice on previous occasions, and by early in November the number of enemy parties were causing such mayhem across the state that the wily Scot felt he must place the exigencies of the service ahead of his desire to please his great new patron. Balfour wrote to Cornwallis with a lucid
tour
d’horizon of the war in the Carolinas, and urged caution upon the general. The lieutenant colonel began by justifying his own decision not to give such potentially unwelcome advice sooner:

The most earnest desire for a forward movement, and an offensive war, prevented my mentioning any sort of obstructions, being most earnestly anxious that your operations should not be retarded by any objections of mine, unless I saw, and felt, difficulty too obvious to be overlooked for the general safety – and your success. The general appearance of things at present
is exactly that … a general distrust, and a kind of calm to observe what side is to preponderate, the friends of government, anxious to palliate the faults of the rebels, and willing to make as much of their own equivocal merit, as possible.

The ‘desire for forward movement’ had already produced the defeat at King’s Mountain, so Balfour warned Cornwallis that ‘in attempting to gain two provinces, one, if not both, might have been lost’. With the ‘friends of the government’ increasingly moving to a position of neutrality, any thought the general might have about leaving South Carolina would have to be tempered by the possibility of disaster in that state. It would not be possible to leave the royal militia to defend backcountry, for Balfour judged ‘I have now totally given up that they can be of use so far as being in arms for us.’ Balfour may have despised General Clinton, but had that general been at Winnsborough instead of New York in mid-November, he would probably have given Cornwallis exactly the same advice. The first imperative was for consolidation in South Carolina. Attempts that autumn to eliminate the partisan bands of Marion and Sumpter had failed.

There was much for Cornwallis to reflect upon in this letter, and he realised that he should have to meet Balfour in order to discuss the forthcoming campaign. The earl’s particular friend and usual partner in such discussions, Captain Ross, was not yet returned from presenting the Camden dispatches, so the general would make do with an older Scotsman. Conversations of such a delicate nature were best conducted face to face, but the two men were 130 miles apart, the roads poor and infested with enemy banditti. The general would not be able to travel even to Camden for the meeting, so he suggested Balfour come up to Winnsborough.

During the latter part of November and early December, Balfour expedited the dispatch upcountry of much of what Cornwallis needed to re-fit his army. Some recruits arrived – just twenty for the 23rd but several times this number for the 33rd who needed a large addition after their Camden casualties. New uniforms as well as supplies of food and rum were also sent up. Cornwallis was full of gratitude for these efforts, but even in late November was indicating to Balfour: ‘We must begin our operations by driving Gates from the frontier, which the first forward movement will instantly effect.’ The general intended to campaign with his customary aggression.

Not long after receiving this letter, Balfour was delighted to report
the arrival of a convoy of forty-five sail in Charleston. There had been worries that they had been dispersed or wrecked by storms. On 15 December, several thousand troops started to disembark, including the long promised reinforcement under Leslie: the Brigade of Guards, 700 troops, formed the pick, but there was also a company of Hessian jaegers, a Hessian infantry regiment, two newly raised redcoat regiments and elements of some other corps. Balfour considered the two green British corps unfit for anything but garrison duties. All of the reinforcements had been dispatched with the usual chaotic organisation, arriving without ammunition. Balfour instantly whistled up 20,000 rounds for those troops that would march upcountry.

With the arrival of so many men, Balfour realised that his opportunity had come to travel up to see Cornwallis. While the Guards and others prepared themselves to march, he set out on the journey north with hundreds of recruits and convalescents. Captain Thomas Peter, the officer who would lead the 23rd in 1781, had arrived in Charleston with the convoy, and went up with his commanding officer.

Balfour arrived in Winnsborough on the evening of 20 December, and spent a couple of days there. He dined with the officers of the 23rd and with Lord Cornwallis, briefing the general on Leslie’s reinforcement and the plans for their movement from Charleston. Whatever representations the commandant of Charleston may have made about the rural insurrection in South Carolina, it was not ultimately the business of lieutenant colonels to dictate strategy to lieutenant generals. Balfour could not challenge Cornwallis’s desire to take the fight to the enemy lurking in North Carolina, but he could ensure that the poorer regiments of redcoats recently arrived could be used to reinforce the battle against enemy partisans in his own province. The lieutenant colonel left Winnsborough satisfied that he had been true to his professional convictions about the situation in South Carolina but had not endangered his relationship with his patron. That noble general, on the contrary, had shown him every mark of favour at his table. Returned to Charleston on 29 December, Balfour wrote to the general, ‘I got back last night with my heart so strongly impressed with all your goodness to me that believe me, no time can ever erase [it].’

The army at Winnsborough awaited the arrival of Leslie, while celebrating the New Year in the modest manner that their rude surroundings would allow. The arrival of a new general on the
American side would soon upset Cornwallis’s plans. Gates had been replaced as the commander of the Southern Department of the Continental Army. The new man had a better brain and a harder conscience. It would be against him that Earl Cornwallis would have to match wits in the weeks ahead.

Major General Nathaniel Greene took command of the remnants of Gates’s army on 2 December 1780. Greene, a strapping Rhode Islander, had many advantages over his predecessor: he was fourteen years younger; he enjoyed the confidence of George Washington; as a self-taught soldier he was both more thorough and creative in his methods. The new commander arrived in Charlotte with a mixed reputation – while nobody could doubt his commitment to the revolutionary cause, some rivals blamed him for complicity in the fall of Fort Washington in 1776 and cupidity during his time as the army’s quartermaster general.

Surveying the wrecks of Gates’s army, Greene’s reports painted a sorry picture. There were about 1,500 Continentals, most of them the remnants of de Kalb’s division mauled at Camden. While the Marylanders and Delawares were excellent soldiers, they were suffering from the same agues and shortages that had so recently debilitated the British army. The North Carolina militia had been picking the land clean once more, and were contemptible in Greene’s view: ‘Everybody is a general and the powers of the government are so feeble that it is with the greatest difficulty you can restrain them from plundering one another … they must go to war their way or not at all.’