The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (19 page)

Foremost among the advocates of a short, sharp war was Lord George Germain, who, in August, replaced the more flexible Dartmouth as Secretary for the Colonies with a mandate to mastermind operations throughout North America. It was a task he relished and, if resilience and singlemindedness counted for something in the exercise of high command, Germain was well qualified. Despite having been cashiered from the army in 1760 for cowardice during the Battle of Minden, he inspired considerable confidence among the troops in North America who were looking to him for rigorous measures.
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Germain’s formula for victory was based upon a variety of American intelligence sources which agreed that the colonists’ will to fight was fragile and would never survive a major defeat. He therefore proposed to deploy a large force in America which would seek out, engage and overcome the rebel army in a single, decisive action. It was confidently imagined that a victory of this nature would not only destroy the rebels, but would give encouragement to Loyalists and those who had remained aloof from the contest. Again, intelligence reports from America had described the existence of a substantial Loyalist element, temporarily driven underground by the intimidation of Congress supporters, which would reveal its sympathies when it was safe to do so. The forthcoming war would be a struggle for hearts and minds, and the British generals knew that one of their most important tasks was to assure the Loyalists that they would be protected for, as Clinton later observed, they would never declare themselves ‘before there is the strongest certainty of his army being in a condition to support them’.
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Manpower was the key ingredient in Germain’s battleplan. From the start of the war there were difficulties in procuring sufficient troops for operations of the scale he had in mind. During 1775–6 garrisons in Ireland, Gibraltar and Minorca were pared to the bone and, as the war progressed, an intense recruiting campaign was undertaken in Britain.

It was never an easy job to tempt men to enter a world where they could expect a flogging for a trifling misdemeanour, low pay, thin rations, capricious officers, exposure to danger and the contempt of so-called respectable society. Patriotism, that is soldiering, was regarded by Samuel Johnson as the last resort of the scoundrel; in other words, a man without the ability or inclination to live honestly. It was a harsh judgement, but supported by current practice; many desperate recruiting officers scoured prisons to fill out the ranks. In 1776, Lieutenant Ridout of the 46th Regiment discovered some ‘very fine lads’ in Shrewsbury gaol for ‘petty offences’ and obtained their pardon and enlistment into his regiment. One, grateful for this chance of redemption, rose to the rank of sergeant during the American War.
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There were recidivists and others for whom the war was an opportunity for rape and plunder, and their conduct gave American propagandists a stock of stories about British brutality. Even experienced men of good character joined in the looting, which some believed was the reward for victory, or just vengeance against civilians who insulted them and secretly favoured their adversaries. This may have been why officers encouraged their men to steal during the campaign around Boston in April 1775.
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The more audacious even robbed their own officers. Captain Peebles of the Black Watch found some linen and six or seven bottles of rum and wine taken from his tent, and observed that ‘there are some sad rascals in this Batallion who are wicked enough to do anything, and have cunning enough to escape.’
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No doubt these spoils were consumed, but there were plenty of enterprising American fences willing to buy stolen goods from soldiers and resell them.
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The supply of rogues was not enough to meet the demands of Germain’s strategy and so a stopgap measure of the Seven Years War was revived and mercenaries were purchased. An approach made to Tsaritsa Catherine for 20,000 Russians failed and so the government turned to the Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel who proved more obliging. In all, 19,000 Germans, two-thirds of the Hessians, served with the British army in North America, of whom approximately 3,000 deserted, 500 were killed as a result of enemy action and 4,500 died from diseases.
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On the whole, the Hessians proved good value for money and well-motivated, brave soldiers. Schooled in the habits of submission as the subjects of German autocrats, they were willing to fight for the rights of monarchy against an enemy whom British propaganda depicted as inhuman fiends. Two Hessians, captured in November 1776, revealed to an American army surgeon that they had been told that their opponents were ‘savages and barbarians’ who tortured their prisoners in the Indian manner.

For the greater part, British soldiers fought out of a sense of duty and loyalty, first to their comrades and then to their country. Officers of aristocratic background, and most were, had little but contempt for adversaries who were their social inferiors. ‘I hope that we shall soon have done with these scoundrels for one dirties one’s fingers by meddling with them,’ wrote Major Lord Rawdon, Clinton’s adjutant. An Anglican, brought up to associate religious dissent with political radicalism, Rawdon was also disgusted by the ‘godly twang’ of the rebel ‘psalm singers’.
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Captain Peebles was enraged by being overcharged by his landlady who was ‘greedy and cunning like the rest of the Yankees’, but he also felt pity for those unwillingly drawn into the war. After the court martial of a rapist, saved from the gallows by the intercession of his victim, he wrote in his journal, ‘hard is the fate of many who suffer indiscriminately in a civil war’.
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A humane man, Peebles like many others, was distressed by the sight of abandoned or burned farmsteads and the fate of families driven from their homes.

Derision of the Americans’ fighting stamina quickly gave way to grudging respect. A year’s campaigning taught Clinton that ‘the Americans were trained to stratagem and enterprise’ and ‘they knew every trick of chicane’.
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They were also capable of fighting in the conventional manner, which was proved in June 1775 during the struggles for Breed’s and Bunker’s Hills overlooking Boston. Further north, Benedict Arnold and General Richard Montgomery had taken the initiative and launched an invasion of Canada which they advertised as a war of liberation.

As the Americans advanced towards Quebec, they called on the French-Canadians to free themselves from tyranny, and for a time it was expected they might. ‘The Canadians talk of that damned absurd word liberty,’ complained one British officer, and General Guy Carleton, the governor of Quebec and veteran of Wolfe’s campaigns, feared defections from his militia.
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In fact, most Canadians remained prudently neutral and waited to see what, if any, success the Americans would achieve. The arrival of winter, Montgomery’s foolish decision to besiege Quebec with an outnumbered force, and Carleton’s brilliantly improvised defence combined to frustrate the Americans. The city was relieved in May 1776 by a British flotilla, by which time Arnold had withdrawn with the remnants of his army.

It was impossible to hold Boston. Relations between townsfolk and soldiers were sulphurous and the Americans controlled the immediate hinterland. In March 1776, the commander-in-chief, Howe, ordered the city’s evacuation. ‘It is not possible to describe to you the confusion everything is in here,’ Lieutenant Charles Cochrane of the King’s Regiment told his uncle. ‘To embark (under the guns of those Rascals) the above remaining stores with the heavy baggage of Women and Children, friends of the Government, which last, I believe, might be put in a canoe, is such an operation as probably never happened before.’ It was the climax to a year of humiliation, and Cochrane added ruefully that ‘an uncommon bad fate has attended our Affairs here from first to last; after scrambling through this disagreeable winter with so little assistance from any quarter that we must make a
moon light flit
is most irksome.’
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Nevertheless, Cochrane found grounds for optimism and believed that the army’s fortunes would soon revive once Germain’s grand strategy was implemented.

Cochrane’s confidence was misplaced. The North American battlefield encompassed a million square miles, most of them covered with mountains, woodland and scrub. Armies were easily swallowed up in this wilderness, through which they often marched blindly; Clinton, traversing New Jersey in 1778, had only the vaguest idea of Washington’s whereabouts until he was attacked at Monmouth.
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The possession of major towns counted for less than it did in Europe because economic resources, such as iron foundries, were scattered. Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston were all under British control at various times, but their occupation did little to hamper the American war effort.

Bold and imaginative generals might have overcome these difficulties, but the thinking of the British high command was uninventive and often timid. Moreover, and this became painfully apparent as the war proceeded, the British command structure was shaky. Germain in London retained overall direction of strategy, but his instructions to the commanders in America were often delayed by as much as eight to ten weeks because the ships carrying them faced contrary winds. Misunderstandings between him and his subordinates remained uncorrected, and in some instances the generals in the field had no choice but to follow their own judgement. There was also, at least in 1775–6, confusion over objectives. Germain favoured an all-out effort while North still held out hope for a negotiated settlement.

It took time for these flaws to reveal themselves. Howe’s operations in the summer of 1776 had started slowly, thanks to delayed reinforcements, but they showed every sign of prospering. He had decided to concentrate his forces on New York in the centre of an area where Loyalism was believed to be strong. The landing on Staten Island went off smoothly and, in mid-August, Howe launched his 23,000-strong army against the outer defences of New York City. A solid, painstaking commander, Howe proceeded cautiously and in doing so missed the opportunity to fight a decisive engagement. For a time, Washington had been prepared to risk the bulk of the rebel army to save the city, but Howe did not offer battle. Instead he attacked the enemy’s earthworks piecemeal and, when it was clear that New York would fall, shrank from a pursuit of the badly mauled and demoralised American army.

There now seemed no need for the hammer-blow which Germain had imagined would end the war. Howe’s successes around New York during the autumn of 1776 indicated that the British army was unbeatable, and at the end of November he felt strong enough to issue a proclamation which offered an unconditional pardon to all rebels who surrendered and reaffirmed their allegiance to George III. Many Americans, well aware of the pitiful state of Washington’s army, were glad to accept Howe’s clemency. The temper of the colonists seemed to be changing and Howe, several victories to his credit and with a base at New York, felt he could safely alter his strategy. Henceforward he would aim to occupy territory rather than coaxing Washington into a full-scale engagement. This shift offered tempting political dividends; wavering rebels would be further disheartened and the presence of British troops in an area would rally the local Loyalists.

Detachments of British and Hessian troops fanned out across Delaware and New Jersey. At first this subsidiary campaign went well, but Washington, for psychological as much as military reasons, took the offensive and overcame a Hessian unit at Trenton on Christmas Day. This coup was followed by another at Princeton a fortnight later.

The battles of Trenton and Princeton were small-scale affairs which had a disproportionate effect on American opinion. In July 1776, the radicals inside Congress had pushed for and obtained a Declaration of Independence which severed all links with Britain, and ruled out any future compromise based on British sovereignty over America. It is impossible to assess precisely how many Americans supported this move; John Adams, one of the signatories to the declaration, calculated that about a third of the colonists were wholeheartedly behind independence and that the rest were either Loyalists or neutral. To judge by the numbers who took advantage of Howe’s amnesty, the balance was in danger of swinging against supporters of independence. Trenton and Princeton reversed this trend by demonstrating that the British army was not invincible and that there was plenty of fight left in the Americans.

A blow had been struck against Loyalism, which soon began to wither in Delaware and New Jersey. The Loyalist predicament then and throughout the war was summed up by William Smith, the Chief Justice of New York. ‘How unfavourable the Prospects of the Americans who have joined the British Army! They can be safe by Nothing but Conquest of their own Country – If America prevails by the Sword or obtains Concessions to her Contentment, the Tories are ruined. In either Case they must finally abandon the Continent – In the Interim they must borrow Subsistence, which will be to many of them immediate Ruin.’
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The British were losing the war for hearts and minds.

The year 1777 marked the turning point of the war. After over a year’s fighting, the British army had made little headway; there had been no signal victory over the Americans, inroads into territory held by Congress had been limited and Loyalist support had proved disappointing. Howe was pessimistic, and early in July he told Clinton that he expected the war to drag on for at least another year. Clinton, who had just returned from leave in Britain, observed that the government wanted victory by winter. Howe replied, ‘If the ministers would not carry it on another year, they had better give it up now.’
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Germain’s strategy for 1777 was an invasion of Pennsylvania by units of Howe’s army. Simultaneously, a mixed force of 8,000 British, Hessians, Canadians and Indians, commanded by Burgoyne, would advance southwards along the Hudson towards Albany, where he would be joined by reinforcements sent by Howe from New York. If everything went to plan, a wedge would have been driven between the militant New England colonies and the rest of America. This was what Germain intended, and it was made clear in a despatch written on 18 May which Howe received on 16 August, when he was bogged down in Pennsylvania and in no position to assist Burgoyne.