Читать книгу "Downright Fighting" - Thomas J. Fleming - Страница 7

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Daniel Morgan might call him “Benny.” Most Americans called him “the Butcher” or “Bloody Tarleton.” A thick-shouldered, compact man of middle height, with bright red hair and a hard mouth, he was the most feared and hated British soldier in the South. In 1776 he had come to America, a 21-year-old cornet—the British equivalent of a second lieutenant. He was now a lieutenant colonel, a promotion so rapid for the British army of the time that it left older officers frigid with jealousy. Tarleton had achieved this spectacular rise almost entirely on raw courage and fierce energy. His father had been a wealthy merchant and Lord Mayor of Liverpool. He died while Tarleton was at Oxford, leaving him £5,000, which the young man promptly gambled and drank away, while ostensibly studying for the law in London. He joined the army and discovered he was a born soldier.

In America, he was a star performer from the start. In the fall of 1776, while still a cornet, he played a key role in capturing Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, second in command of the American army, when he unwisely spent the night at a tavern in New Jersey, several miles from his troops. Soon a captain, Tarleton performed ably for the next two years and in 1778 was appointed a brigade major of the British cavalry.

Charles Lee, an English general retired on half-pay at the outbreak of the war, threw in with Americans and received several important commands early in the war. His capture in late 1776 at a New Jersey tavern by dragoons under Banastre Tarleton was a celebrated event.

Tarleton again distinguished himself when the British army retreated from Philadelphia to New York in June 1778. At Monmouth Court House he began the battle by charging the American advance column and throwing it into confusion. In New York, sorting out his troops, the new British commander, Sir Henry Clinton, rewarded Tarleton with another promotion. While the British were in Philadelphia, various loyalists had recruited three troops of dragoons. In New York, officers—some loyalist, some British—recruited companies of infantry and more troops of dragoons from different segments of the loyalist population. One company was Scottish, two others English, a third American-born. Clinton combined these fragments into a 550-man unit that he christened the British Legion. Half cavalry, half infantry, a legion was designed to operate on the fringe of a main army as a quick-strike force. Banastre Tarleton was given command of the British Legion, which was issued green coats and tan breeches, unlike other loyalist regiments, who wore red coats with green facings.