BANASTRE TARLETON

Banastre Tarleton and his cavalrymen, 'Tarleton's Raiders' are referenced at the battles of Waxhaws, Guilford Courthouse, and Green Spring in my third Revolutionary War story. One of Tarleton's Raiders has a minor but critical role. So who was Banastre Tarleton?

Tarleton was born in 1754 to a wealthy Liverpool merchant. His father purchased a Cornet’s commission for him in the King's Dragoon Guards after he graduated from Oxford University. Tarleton volunteered to serve in the colonies. In 1776, at twenty-two, he joined General Sir Henry Clinton’s Charleston Expedition. Ambitious and eager to make a name for himself, he was named Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed, "British Legion" two years later. It was in 1780 when he was transferred to serve in the Southern Campaign, that his notorious reputation began.   

His ruthless conduct during several engagements coined the phrase "Bloody Tarleton" and "Tarleton’s Quarter". To give no quarter, a military idiom means to show no mercy or clemency. Tarleton was reported to have annihilated combatants trying to surrender.

One such controversial incident was the Waxhaw massacre in May of 1780 in South Carolina, between Abraham Buford’s Continental force and a Loyalist force led by Banastre Tarleton. During the surrender of the American forces, Tarleton was shot at during the truce causing his horse to fall on him. Thinking the truce broken, Loyalists and British troops attacked the Patriot forces including men surrendering. Many were killed, badly injured, or taken prisoner. The Battle of Waxhaws became an American propaganda tool to bolster recruitment and increase hostilities toward the British. There were mixed feelings as to whether this was a massacre or a terrible miscalculation.

Cornwallis ordered Tarleton to eradicate General Francis Marion, also known as The Swamp Fox, and his guerrilla fighters.  Tarleton pursued Marion for many hours and miles but was unsuccessful in that venture.

Banastre Tarleton

Mel Gibson’s movie, "The Patriot" was based on this pursuit.  In the film, the character William Tavington, portraying Banastre Tarleton even wears a similar uniform to Tarleton.

William Tavington

It’s been suggested by some historians, Tarleton’s ruthless tactics and treatment of the civilian population played a role in encouraging Americans with neutral attitudes toward the war to finally favor the Patriot cause.

Cornwallis sent Tarleton across the York River to Gloucester Point seeking an escape route when the British army was trapped at Yorktown. At the time of Cornwallis' surrender, Banastre Tarleton still at Gloucester Point, surrendered the British forces there but he stayed behind and asked General Rochambeau to grant him protection. He feared being personally attacked because of his infamous reputation.

Banastre Tarlton was disliked by the British as well as American forces. Many of his superiors believed he was too reckless and ruthless in battle. He was also censured by the Americans for his unmerciful treatment of Continental soldiers. After the surrender at Yorktown, when British leaders were invited to dine with Patriot leaders, Tarleton was not included.

Tarleton returned to England, continued his military career, and entered politics. In 1790, on his second attempt, he became a Member of Parliament. His military promotions continued, first to Colonel in 1790, and then, to Major general in 1794. He served under the Duke of Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars. Tarleton was awarded a baronetcy in 1815, and a knighthood by the King in 1820. He died on January 23rd, 1833.

Dispelling Colonial Myths: "Bloody Ban" or, Why does it matter?

The infamous Ban Tarleton

Was Banastre Tarleton really the monster he's portrayed to be?

Sometimes, deconstructing myth can be hard and cruel. I've found often that people would rather hold onto their suppositions and prejudices than look at the other side of an issue--or accept evidence for another view. And it's astonished me how fact can get embellished into legend, and either romanticized or demonized, not very long after the fact.

The more I read, the more I realize that some myths will never be completely dispelled. People's opinions are sometimes literally set in stone, and so many will continue believing the idea that the patriot cause was completely righteous, and the British one completely corrupt.

I suppose that starting at the outset from a British/loyalist point of view skews one’s perspective at the outset. But I found it interesting, at the least, to find all the evidence that calls into question popular accounts of various historical events.

Enter Oatmeal for the Foxhounds.** Oh, the things one finds online! And warning, if you’re staunchly anti-British when it comes to RevWar history, you may not appreciate what amounts to a Ban Tarleton fansite, but I found it an amazingly rich resource for many of the events and important figures of the time (see in particular the “Friends, Enemies and Comrades” page). The full text of Tarleton’s own “Campaigns” is found here, as well.

The very name of Banastre Tarleton evokes some of the RevWar's wildest stories. He’s accused of everything from the immoral (a supposed claim to ravishing more women than anyone) to the macabre (digging up the corpse of an enemy for the purpose of gloating over him). The accusations of cruelty were just the beginning. But the site’s own intro says it very well:

It is human nature to want to fit the past into tidy storybook patterns, to reduce it to tales with clear-cut morals populated by heroes and villains. But if we search into the history behind the idealized heroes of myth, legend and folklore, more often than not we find only flawed and ordinary individuals, struggling to survive the sweep of events....

Years ago, in the pages of a novel set during the American Revolution, I stumbled across a less famous victim of the power of folklore: Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, Commandant of the British Legion. Nicknamed "the Green Dragoon" by his twentieth-century biographer¹, Tarleton served under Lord Cornwallis during the Revolution's Southern Campaign, where his aggressive fighting style and gift for fluid, hit-and-run warfare earned him a dark place in local legend. Predictably, he was presented as the novel's "villain," but I found him so entertaining that I was drawn to investigate the history behind the myths of "Bloody Ban."

The young man who waited, buried and often forgotten in the pages of historical research, had little in common with the black-hearted villain immortalized in Revolutionary War myths as "the Butcher of the Carolinas." A devil-may-care charmer, the real Ban Tarleton quickly became one of my favorite historical figures, and so he remains. He was a fearless and ferocious cavalry leader, capable of showing his enemies both chivalry and ruthlessness. Away from the battlefield, he was a witty, hyper-sociable little rogue who made friends by the carriageload. (After the war, that list of friends grew to include many of his former enemies such as the Duc de Lauzun, Lafayette, Thaddeus Kosciusko and possibly even Thomas Jefferson.)

While Tarleton was far from a saint, he was just as far from being a monster, and he deserves a better accounting than he is normally given by popular "history." I was inspired to start work on this website when his reputation has been tarred-and-feathered yet again by the movie The Patriot, whose producers cite him as the template for their elegant but antisocial villain, Colonel William Tavington. ... There are vague similarities between their names, they each show plenty of panache when leading a cavalry column, and they share a fondness for fluffy black hats. Beyond that, the resemblance between them is nothing more than a figment of the Hollywood imagination. [Historian Dr. M. M. Gilchrist, AKA Doc M, has more to say on this subject.]

It’s understandable, on one hand, how one side would need all the proof they could get to show that their side was the righteous one ... even if their proof was unsubstantiated. But it’s so true that history is written by the victors ... and skewed by the victors. It’s my opinion, as writers, even or maybe especially as novelists, we owe it to our readers to understand as much as humanly possible of the motivations of all sides of a particular conflict, and of the nuances in how a particular event is reported.

But I digress. :-)

The first question to answer, possibly, is that of Tarleton’s supposed cruelty and brutality. The practice of looting and burning of local wealth is a well-documented military strategy, practiced widely by both sides during the American War for Independence. (Don’t you just love that term? I heard it just recently for the first time.)

Consider this footnote on the page addressing the Colonel Richardson story on Oatmeal For The Foxhounds:

It is all too common for authors to personify the British in the Carolinas as a gang of mindless pyromaniacs who ran around trampling crops and burning buildings for the sheer, bloody heck of it. Needless to say, this is ridiculous. In fact a) they did a lot less of it than legend claims and b) when they did it, there were solid reasons for it. (I would never say "good solid reasons" because in the long run it worked very heavily against them -- but they weren't blessed with the 20/20 hindsight we bring to the situation when we look back on its results from 200 years later.)

It is a basic military goal to keep supplies away from your enemies. In this situation, that meant that the crops and goods of people known to be in open rebellion against the Crown were subject to forfeiture. (Proclamations to this effect had been circulated.) Whenever possible, this "punishment" took the form of confiscation, because the British army desperately needed the supplies themselves. It was Cornwallis's policy to leave a portion of the property and goods for the use of the wife and children of the rebel involved, so they would not be made to suffer. (The Wickwires present a lengthy discussion of how the system was designed to work, as well as why and how it generally failed.)

In other cases -- normally when confiscation was impractical -- forfeiture took the form of destruction. There was a war on, after all, and from the British perspective the rebels were armed terrorists.

The destruction or confiscation of property was a form of punishment used by both sides. For instance, Lawrence E. Babits, A Devil of a Whipping, The Battle of Cowpens (Chapel Hill, N.C. & London: University of North Carolina Press; 1998), p48, has this comment to make on Daniel Morgan's army shortly before the battle of Cowpens: "Morgan's men plundered [Alexander] Chesney's property of everything usable, including grain, trees, clothing, and blankets. ... By camping on a Loyalist's property, Morgan punished Chesney, intimidated other Tories, and lessened his army's impact on local patriots."

One of the points The Patriot actually got right was Ben Martin's speech about the consequences of starting a war that would be fought in your own back yard. The cost can be heavy.

In addition to serving as a punishment, the destruction of rebel property had another aspect which many writers overlook. It robbed the enemy of building materials such as finished lumber and also of strong points which could be fortified. We tend to underestimate the value of finished materials nowadays, but especially in remote locations, they were rare and hard to replace. (Yes, they had plenty of trees, but they needed time and sawmills to turn raw wood into lumber.) There are cases recorded of buildings (including a church) being disassembled and their raw materials used to construct fortifications. And areas were sometimes accepted or rejected for military purposes based on the presence or absence of defensible buildings. (http://home.golden.net/~marg/bansite/banecdotes/85richardson.html#n2)

So was Tarleton worse than anyone else at the time, or was he just extraordinarily efficient in carrying out his assigned mission in the field? Other accounts speak of his quickness to condemn the misbehavior of his dragoons, and of his deference when dealing with the property of Thomas Jefferson.

If you’re interested in reading more about the various legends that have grown up around Tarleton, I would refer you to the Banecdotes page.

Did Tarleton consider his hounds to be military equipment? :-)

**Why "Oatmeal for the Foxhounds"? The phrase comes from a requisition written by Tarleton requesting feed for the hounds brought along on campaign. Apparently fox hunting was considered a good sport to keep officers and their horses conditioned during periods of inactivity in wartime ...

Dispelling Colonial Myths: the Waxhaws Massacre

Historical marker photo, courtesy of royalprovincial.com

Anyone who researches the Southern Campaign of the Revolution long enough will run across that rallying cry of the patriot side: “Tarleton’s Quarter!” The uninitiated might say, who was Tarleton and why are we discussing coins? Seriously, though, the phrase tracks back to a military engagement right after the breaking of the Siege of Charleston.

Reports on this battle later fueled what I can only term Revolutionary propaganda.

Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton will have his own article next month, but for now suffice it to say that he was a rising star in the British army, unremarkable during the northern part of the war, but later distinguished himself in a handful of skirmishes in the countryside around Charleston. The battle at Waxhaws was  relatively minor, all things considered.

But the British were brutal, they said. Tarleton ignored any pleas for surrender, they said.

It was a massacre, they said.

And thus the term “Tarleton’s Quarter” was born, and became the rallying cry all across the Carolinas. But what really happened?            

Banastre Tarleton, by Joshua Reynolds

Essentially, Tarleton was sent upstate with a mounted detachment of the British Legion to pursue South Carolina governor John Rutledge, who had escaped Charleston. Word was that he’d taken refuge with “rebel” leader Abraham Buford, whose forces had been mustered out of Virginia for the aid of Charleston, but turned back after the city surrendered. In the blistering heat of late May 1780 in South Carolina, Tarleton led his forces—a mix of cavalry and mounted infantry, and at least one 3-pound cannon—on an impossible dash into the South Carolina backcountry, covering more than 100 miles in 54 hours.

As they neared, Tarleton devised a plan to delay Buford. He sent an officer ahead with a flag of truce to offer terms of surrender—the same terms General Clinton had offered Charleston, as this was a fairly standard operating procedure before a battle—but greatly exaggerated his numbers (he told Buford they had 700 men). Even then, Buford refused. Some say this was his first tactical error. Surrender would not have been any more disgraceful than what just occurred at Charleston, but it’s possible Buford felt he couldn’t surrender without at least attempting a fight. With a detachment of his own men too far away to help, and knowing he was outnumbered, Buford stopped and formed up his troops in a single line. At least one of his fellow officers said this was his second tactical error.

We might be tempted to say, a battle is a battle, but I’ve learned in my research that this is not so—any more than we can say “a dress is a dress” when dealing with style and modesty and historical accuracy. Certain things went into making good decisions about whether to fight or not (are we outnumbered? does the lay of the land favor us?) and how to carry out the battle. Buford should have arranged his troops differently, for one—and then his last and possibly gravest error was to tell his forces to hold their fire. This works when you have infantry (men on foot) but not for cavalry. The single volley of fire had little effect before the line of Tarleton’s cavalry swept over the line, shattering their formation.

Some of Buford’s men started trying to surrender, and Buford himself attempted to raise a white flag, but some of his men were still fighting, with at least one shooting at Tarleton himself. In the heat and passion of battle—both sides were exhausted and doubtless half out of their heads with the intensity of the early summer sun—Tarleton’s horse was killed, trapping him underneath. The men of his detachment (he’d divided his forces into three sections and was leading the left flank), thought their leader had fallen in battle and went into a frenzy. By the time Tarleton got out from under his horse and got his men under control, enough damage had been done to create the rumor of brutality and massacre.

Military analysts later point out that the officers in charge of the center and right flanks maintained control of their men, and the fighting was soon halted in their quarter. The losses were indeed heavy—113 killed, 150 wounded, 53 captured compared to the British losses of 5 killed and 13 wounded. But later reports of “all wounded dying” or the British executing all their prisoners were rubbish. The British provided for the care of their own and enemy wounded alike, setting up a nearby church as a hospital and summoning doctors from neighboring communities. All the wounded were paroled (released to go home when they were recovered enough). Enough reports exist of civility of behavior by Tarleton and his men after things had calmed down, that it throws the hysteria that followed after into serious question.

Considering what we know today of the psychological impact of war, and the shock it must have been to the backcountry folk for this first battle to arrive on their doorsteps, it’s probably no wonder the event became the rallying cry all the way to the Overmountain settlements, or that they immediately began referring to this young British officer as “Bloody Tarleton.”

The Blood Be Upon Your Head by Jim Piecuch

After my research debunking a popular reenactment myth, I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been to find that reports about this battle differed widely, but I was dismayed ... and disappointed. It begs the question, who do you believe when reading historical accounts, even primary accounts?

For more reading on this subject, and a fascinating look into the early months of the Southern Campaign, I recommend The Blood Be Upon Your Head: Tarleton and the Myth of Buford’s Massacre by Jim Piecuch. (You can find this in many local bookstores in the Carolinas, or Google it ... almost anywhere is better than Amazon for purchasing this one, I think!) A much shorter read, covering several of the salient points, can be found at the Oatmeal for the Foxhounds site: the Waxhaws “Massacre.” (More about this site later!)