Fusiliers (40 page)
Their journey often resumed in the early hours – 2 a.m., for example, on the day they had forced the Catawba. Once under way, the redcoats had no idea whether they would walk four miles or twenty-four, or what they might get by way of supplies at the end of it. In the week after crossing the Catawba, there were slim pickings and organised foraging degenerated into looting with violence. Cornwallis, though, spared the blame from his fighting soldiers when he issued a General Order on 5 February saying, ‘Great complaints having been made of negroes straggling from the line of march, plundering and using violence to the inhabitants, it is Lord Cornwallis’ positive order that no negro shall be suffered to carry arms on any pretence.’ The following day, orders were issued for the formation of a strong rearguard of redcoats to sweep up the stragglers falling to the back of the marching column.
A man who became lame, or too sick to walk, it should be clear,
could not be evacuated back to South Carolina. Four of the ten or so wagons saved from the conflagration at Ramsour’s Mill were earmarked for carrying sick and wounded. Some men, though, could stand this relentless marching no longer, falling deliberately behind, resolved to surrender to their enemies. For the great majority, who remained with the colours, marches sometimes brought pleasant surprises to palliate grinding hardship.
On 10 February, approaching Salem, Cornwallis’s column passed through several villages of Moravians – a German-speaking religious sect who had settled the area and remained neutral in the conflict. There they were able to buy good food and puncheons of home-distilled whiskey. One private of the 33rd even suspected the Germans were trying to get them intoxicated so they might be surprised, noting ‘their liberality in furnishing us so abundantly with spiritous liquors, as all the world knows that a soldier’s chief delight is in drinking’.
The marches continued, twenty-four miles on 13 February, twenty-two on the 14th, bringing them to a place called Dobbin’s Plant, just one more gruelling day’s hike from the River Dan, and Greene’s sanctuary in Virginia. It had been raining hard and many of the roads they slogged along were muddy quagmires – shoes had been sucked off, soles hurriedly stitched at Ramsour’s Mill had come apart. Cornwallis wanted to ask his men for one last exertion. Were they willing to make the final effort to reach the Dan? ‘The soldiers had the same wish as their general,’ wrote Lieutenant Calvert.
During one month’s marching this small army had kept up high morale, intoxicated by its own daring hardiness, plunging after Nathaniel Greene’s army. Cornwallis led by example, Serjeant Lamb writing, ‘He fared like a common soldier … he would admit of no distinction.’ So when Cornwallis appealed for the good marchers that night of the 14th, they responded. So did those who were not able to press on after their few hours of sleep in sodden blankets. Lieutenant Calvert explained: ‘At night the sick and lame received orders to give their shoes to those men who were in health and had none.’ Thus those who could march did so, in many cases in the shoes of those who could not.
The Legion cavalry reached the banks of the Dan ahead of the rest of the army on 15 February. There was disappointment, a sense of anti-climax, after all they had endured. Some heard that Greene had crossed six hours earlier, others averred that it was twelve. At times
Cornwallis’s intelligence had been poor and many hours had been lost – they had sometimes used the wrong fords or advanced mistakenly up poor roads. He had in any case succeeded in chasing his enemy out of North Carolina. More important than this, however, for the redcoats that had followed him hundreds of miles up muddy roads with execrable rations, was a strong bond of respect as well as loyalty that now existed between the general and his troops.
Months earlier, Brigadier O’Hara of the Guards had been very worried about marching into the Carolinas, believing ‘The smallest check to any of his detachments would in all probability end like the unfortunate affair of Saratoga in the total demolition of Lord Cornwallis’s corps.’ There was truth in this: a defeat would indeed have ruined Cornwallis. But having taken part in the race to the Dan, O’Hara’s tone changed. He had never been convinced that the campaign could subjugate North Carolina nor that Britain could win its war in America, but to O’Hara their commander’s decision to pursue his enemy ‘was taken, and carried into execution in a style that must ever do the greatest honour to Lord Cornwallis’s military reputation.’ The soldiers would have expressed it differently, but they too respected their leader’s yearning for a battle, for it was upon that quality that their self-respect as British fighting men rested. How different it was campaigning under Cornwallis to tramping behind that plodder Howe or sitting cooped up in New York for years with Clinton!
It should not be imagined that Major General Greene’s escape was easy. He had made judicious preparations in surveying his route, preparing for the many river crossings. Sick or lame soldiers did not slow him down, they could be left in the care of local people. ‘No general could have conducted his Army better that General Greene did his,’ Lieutenant Calvert averred, before insisting, ‘He had a great advantage in being in a friend’s country – without it he could never have escaped.’
For Serjeant Major Seymour, that survivor of Camden from Delaware, the retreat to the Dan had been every bit as gruelling as for his pursuers. He had frequently fought in the rearguard, having been formed with other remnants of his regiment into a special light company under Captain Kirkwood. ‘The army’, noted Seymour, ‘specially the light troops were very much fatigued by the travelling and want of sleep, for you must understand that we marched for the most part both day and night, the main army of the British being close
in our rears so we had not scarce time to cook our victuals.’ Greene, however, proved adept at motivating his men with both carrot and stick: there were patriotic exhortations and executions. The major general moreover had played time and distance cleverly in his favour, moving closer to reinforcements in Virginia, while calling out thousands of North Carolina militia. He was shifting the balance of forces.
After one day’s rest, Cornwallis’s army proceeded around 50 miles south, back into the interior of North Carolina. At noon on 25 February the 23rd arrived in a place called Hillsborough, where Lieutenant General Cornwallis went through the formality of ‘raising the King’s standard’ and summoning loyalists to join his army.
O’Hara wrote back to England, ‘Greene’s march or rather flight from the Catawba over the Dan, closely pursued by our army, had given some éclat and credit to our arms, that hour of triumph and exultation was considered favourable for calling upon the many friends government had persuaded themselves that we had in every part of North Carolina.’ The Whiggish brigadier was quite cynical about this, believing the government had ‘grossly deceived’ itself once more about the possibilities of Americans being willing to fight for their King.
In one sense the stop at Hillsborough was even worse than O’Hara thought, for it was there that a few British soldiers chose to desert. The 23rd lost eleven men this way in January and February 1781 (although some of them may have been sick or thieving stragglers seized by their enemy), but the majority of that number went during the days in and around Hillsborough. One, John Bennett, was even a serjeant – desertion at this rank was quite a rarity. Cornwallis put such losses down to ‘soldiers being taken by the enemy, in consequence of their straggling out of camp in search of whiskey’. Certainly, it is true that morale remained high overall in the army at this time, but it must be allowed that the weariness at what they had been through must have combined in the minds of deserting soldiers with a dread of what lay ahead.
While Cornwallis paused at Hillsborough everything was changing. Having united with his fresh brigade of Virginia troops, Greene came south of the Dan once more. He was not yet ready to fight Cornwallis but wanted to assemble the North Carolina militia, and, despite Brigadier O’Hara’s weary cynicism, thwart the loyalists that the
American commander was sure would join the King’s troops.
Greene sent a force of light troops ahead under Colonel Henry Lee, whose Legion played much the same role and wore much the same dress as Tarleton’s British Legion. Lee marched close to Hillsborough with orders from Greene to interrupt Cornwallis’s communication with the surrounding country ‘to repress the meditated rising of the loyalists, and, at all events, to intercept any party of them which might attempt to join the enemy’. The Patriots soon received reports of a large party of loyalist Americans – 400 men under Colonel Joseph Pyle – who had assembled and were moving towards Hillsborough. This was precisely the kind of assembly that his Major General wanted ‘repressed’, so Lee, a man well suited to the wily stratagems required of a commander of light troops, hit upon a ruse. He would pretend that his troops were Tarleton’s in order to lure Pyle’s men into a trap. Different participants left various versions of how this stratagem was sprung. According to one, some Tories found Lee’s party and he told them to return with their friends.
Lieutenant Manning of Lee’s Legion supplied another version, later claiming he was sent into Pyle’s camp, pretending to be a deserter seeking to join them. He carried his deception so far as to drink with them, raising a toast: ‘Here’s confusion to Greene, and success to the King and his friends!’ The following day, 25 February, Pyle’s men were led to a meeting point where Lee’s troopers, pretending to be the British Legion, saluted them. Lee rode the length of Pyle’s column ‘with a smiling countenance, dropping occasionally expressions complimentary to the good looks and commendable conduct of his loyal friends’. And then the killing began.
Ninety or so of Pyle’s loyalists were cut down where they stood. Confused to the end, some of those who fled eventually reached the British camp and complained about the brutality of Tarleton’s dragoons. Of those wounded men who surrendered, some were promptly dispatched by Lee’s men with cries of ‘Remember Buford’, a reference to Tarleton’s treatment of Virginians who tried to surrender at Waxhaws in May 1780. Lee subsequently said that the killing had been started by the loyalists when they recognised a Patriot neighbour among the Legion. Equally it is clear that Lee’s mission included frightening local loyalists into submission. Lieutenant Manning subsequently remarked that the majority of Tories had been allowed to escape, precisely to spread terror among the King’s friends. Greene
greeted the news by saying, ‘It has had a very happy effect on those disaffected persons, of which there are too many in this county.’ Since Greene did not hesitate to make examples of his own men, it is hard to imagine that he had ordered Lee to be merciful towards his enemies.
News of these events caused great shock in the British camp. It was denounced as ‘Pyle’s Massacre’, and exaggerated stories about what had happened were added to the grisly reality. One officer of the 23rd Fusiliers wrote to his brother, ‘300 of our friends… were every man scalped, and their leader, Colonel Pyle, hung up by his heels.’ For Greene, intimidation worked, and only a handful of loyalists came in to Hillsborough before Cornwallis moved his army off.
Cornwallis had been, until he reached the Dan, the hunter. As March began, Greene assumed that role, and Cornwallis would have to decide whether to retreat or to do as he had done at Camden, and take his chances against a superior foe.
NINETEEN
Or James Webster’s Finest Hour
The encounter between Tarleton’s Legion and Colonel Lee’s American horse was like many affairs of the advanced guards; a brief, frightening scramble in which high spirits and superior tactics vied for superiority. The British Legion cavalry had come forward in a narrow lane, hemmed in with high fences, near New Garden, a backcountry Quaker community. Tarleton’s men, seeing cavalry at what they imagined was the tail end of an enemy column just a few yards ahead, fired their pistols, let out a great cry and set spurs to their horses. Colonel Lee, however, had concealed two of his three cavalry troops to the sides of the road, who came charging down on the Tories. The British Legion were rebuffed, having several men dismounted, others receiving cuts from the flashing sabres of their adversaries.
Tarleton’s horsemen went to the right about, galloping down the narrow lane, back towards their comrades. The wise commander on the march gave particular attention to the order in which his companies proceeded, for in the fast, furious moments in which combat was joined, this would determine the order in which they could be brought into action. Hearing the commotion ahead of them, the Guards Light Company had deployed its platoons ready to fire. When the British Legion horse came galloping by, they were ready for the pursuing Americans. The Guards let fly a volley. Most aimed too high, showering the American dragoons with leaves and severed twigs as they reined in their mounts. Lee was thrown from his horse but quickly remounted another, then threw his own infantry into play.
