Those Damned Rebels
THE PERIPATETIC REVIEWER
by Edward Weeks
by
Putnam’s, $7.95
In this vigorous narrative Michael Pearson, a newcomer among British historians, has retold a story dear to American hearts. His purpose is to show the provocation, the organization, and the military course of the American Revolution as seen through contemporary British eyes. The British governors and commanders in the field reported home regularly, as did Lord Stormont, the ambassador at Versailles, who knew how successfully the rebels were wooing French support; their letters and memos are part of the source material, as are the minutes of the Cabinet meetings jotted down by the soberest of the ministers after the private dinners.
More lively and personal are the journals and long letters written home by the younger British officers, of which Mr. Pearson quotes more than fifty. Taken together they form an exciting, highly partisan view of a war which the British always seemed on the verge of winning, but never did.
The provocation rightly begins in St. James’s Palace where George III, aged thirty-five—“dull, pedantic, stubborn, precise”—was determined to repress the upstarts in Massachusetts. At his command he had a Tory majority in Parliament, whose loyalty he had secured with bribes of £70,000; a pudgy Prime Minister, Lord North; and the bitter Lord George Germain, Secretary for the Colonies, once cashiered from the army for cowardice and now eager to recoup his reputation. None of these three autocrats properly estimated the depth of the opposition across the water.
Britain, the most powerful, imperial nation in the world, had outgrown both her army and her navy. When the rebellion reached down the coast as far as Virginia and the Carolinas, King George decided to hire troops to send overseas with his veteran regiments, including the Grenadier Guards, in the largest operation Britain had ever mounted. He first appealed to “Sister Kitty” for 20,000 Russian infantry, but after a brief flirtation, she refused: “There are moments when we must not be too rigorous,” was the comment of Catherine of Russia. He then turned to the Prince of Hesse-Kassel for those regiments of Hessians, with their highly colorful uniforms and their wicked bayonets.
Mr. Pearson has as good an eye for character as for action. Most perceptive are his portraits of the five British commanders: the Howe brothers—the elder, the Admiral, the more important; “Billie” Howe, who was slow to go to battle and always waited to finish an engagement tomorrow; his replacement, Sir Henry Clinton, self-seeking, querulous, but a cool head; Johnny Burgoyne, the dashing leader of the Dragoons but a disaster in command; and Lord George Cornwallis, ambitious to replace Clinton and as helpless as Burgoyne when the Continentals and the French combined to close in on him in Virginia.
The Howes, who were early on the scene, were charged with the diplomatic mission of placating or buying off the rebels, and enjoyed temporary success with the American Tories in New York and in Philadelphia. Hoping to conciliate, they did not push home their military advantage when Washington was on the run. But first and last, as Mr. Pearson relates, these veterans from Europe were governed by a Braddock psychology—they wanted the rebels to meet them in serried ranks, as in the Seven Years’ War, where musket, bayonet, and saber did the work, not behind stone walls, with the withering rifle fire so devastating at Lexington and Bunker Hill. They resented what they called “the sneaky rebel technique,” not realizing that the Colonists had adopted it as the natural defense against the Indians. And they never learned: the mistakes so costly to Howe at Bunker Hill were repeated five years later by Tarleton when his apparent victory at the Cowpens was thrown into “unaccountable panic” by the paralyzing blast of Morgan’s Rifles. As the author says, “The true battle for America was always fought in the elusive realm of confidence.” As the British lost theirs, Washington gained.
I cannot remember reading anywhere a more vivid account of the action at Boston, Saratoga, or Long Island; and, with the last roll of the dice, of that incredible timing which brought together the French fleet and the Continentals at Yorktown. What gives spice, humor, and pity to all this are the quotations from Baroness von Riedesel’s diary as she cares for her children in a bloody cellar and helps to nurse the dying General Fraser; Benjamin Franklin’s witty demeanor both in London and in Paris; and the letters from combatants as perceptive as Lieutenant Mackenzie. It is good to be reminded that long before the final peace, in London the war had become as unpopular as Vietnam.