Banastre Tarleton

Sir Banastre Tarleton , oil painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds , 1782

Sir Banastre Tarleton, 1st Baronet GCB (born August 21, 1754 in Liverpool , England ; † January 16 or 25, 1833 in Leintwardine , Shropshire ), British officer in the American War of Independence , was notorious among the Americans for his ruthless harshness Warfare also against the civilian population (nickname from the American side bloody ban or butcher ). He is one of the most controversial figures in the Revolutionary War.

youth

Banastre Tarleton was one of six children of the wealthy merchant, shipowner and slave trader John Tarleton from Liverpool and his wife Jane (née Parker). His siblings included John and Clayton Tarleton . He studied law at the Middle Temple in London and from 1771 until his father's death in 1773 in Oxford . Even then, he was more interested in sports than in books. Since he had lost the inherited £ 5,000 at the game within a year, he had to join the army in 1775 and bought a commission as a cavalry officer with the 1st Dragoon Guards ("Green Dragoons") with money from his mother, but soon proved himself as capable and "good on horseback".

American Revolution

In December 1775 he went to America as a volunteer under General Cornwallis in the War of Independence.

As soon as he arrived, Tarleton was involved in the first siege of Charleston in June 1776, which was unsuccessful. Under the command of Colonel William Harcourt, he took part as brigade major of the 16th Light Dragoons in New York in reconnaissance expeditions to explore the movements of General Charles Lee's forces in New Jersey . On Friday, December 13th, he surrounded a house Lee was staying in in Basking Ridge and threatened to detain it by threatening to burn it down. For this he became captain of the 1st company of the Liverpool Royal Volunteers (79th Foot).

His reputation had now risen so that he end of 1779 - although still quite young, penniless and out of the middle class - as a lieutenant colonel commander of the newly formed "British Legion" was a mixed of light infantry and cavalry troops from the British against loyal Americans from New York and Pennsylvania, soon also called "Tarleton's Raiders" ("raid" are called quick reconnaissance / booty rides of the cavalry). They wore green uniforms, the Tory colors. He operated with them that same year in South Carolina in support of General Henry Clinton's campaign that led to the conquest of Charleston . Robbed of almost all of his horses during the sea crossing, he quickly requisitioned new ones and very effectively closed all supply routes to Charleston.

On May 29, 1780 he and 150 mounted men - an advance detachment of his total of 270 men - overpowered a militia force of 350 to 380 Virgins under Abraham Buford, who had marched to relieve Charleston but moved north after the fall of the city. Tarleton pursued them in violent kicks (105 miles in 54 hours) and gained a 10-day lead. Buford initially refused to surrender to the outnumbered troops and continued his march, but was forced to surrender by heavy losses. According to the American point of view, Tarleton then ignored the white flag and continued the massacre in order not to burden himself with prisoners in the further advance. According to his own admission, chaos broke out in his troops after his horse was shot from under him and his people believed he was dead. In the end, 113 Americans were killed and 203 captured, of which 150 were left behind from being overly wounded. Tarleton's losses were 5 dead and 12 wounded. The minor skirmish was christened the Battle of Waxhaw Creek by the British , the Waxhaw Massacre or the Buford Massacre by the Americans . It contributed a lot to the motivation and desire for revenge among the American militias. Similar to the “Magdeburg Pardon” in the Thirty Years War, there was talk of “Tarleton's grace” (meaning no mercy), “Tarleton's quarter”. Tarleton themselves and Cornwallis were justified in their reputation as a tough force.

Tarleton was instrumental in the Cornwallis victory at the Battle of Camden in August 1780, where he ruthlessly pursued the fleeing militia. At Fishing Creek he also won on August 19 against a four-fold superior, 1,000-man partisan army led by Thomas Sumter , which he later pursued until it was almost completely destroyed. In South Carolina , Tarleton had a guerrilla opponent in Francis Marion (1732–1795) whom he never got hold of: He said the devil must be in league with the "damn old fox", and Marion was actually nicknamed after that "Swamp Fox" (swamp fox). Cornwallis withdrew to South Carolina after Major Ferguson's defeat on Kings Mountain. Tarleton, who was absent for several weeks in September due to malaria or yellow fever, kept the lines open and in November was busy punishing people who had been released on the slogan not to fight the British King again. From the point of view of the Americans, he kept himself harmless from the civilian population by using a scorched earth tactic, because he could not get hold of Marion, which turned her even more against himself and the British. Reports of his brutal behavior made the rounds, for example he is said to have first dined with the widow of the late American General Richardson and then burned down his house, cattle and fields (November 1780, at Nelson's Ferry). Many British officers were also repulsed by his approach.

At Blackstock Farm there was another clash with Sumter in November 1780, who had set up a new partisan army. Here Tarleton suffered major losses and was himself wounded (as was Sumter, without Tarleton's knowledge), but proclaimed a victory. When the Americans under Nathaniel Greene divided their regular army of around 2,000 men in January 1781, Tarleton was to attack the group under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan with a unit reinforced to 1,100 men. In this action, his unit was almost wiped out at the Battle of Cowpens . He attacked rashly directly and ran into the trap of Morgan, who had positioned himself well and had his first line of volunteers in apparent flight behind a second line of experienced "Continentals" into the trap. Tarleton lost 800 men, but he himself managed to escape. He was severely criticized by other British officers, so that he asked for his dismissal and a court martial, but Cornwallis, who wanted to keep him as a brilliant cavalry leader, refused.

He reorganized his British Legion and was reinstated by the Cornwallis in his earlier tactical use. After success in skirmishes at Tarrants House and in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in March 1781, in which he lost two fingers by a shot in the hand, he marched with Cornwallis to Virginia . In a raid to Charlottesville , he attempted to capture Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Parliament. They were warned by a nightly ride of 40 miles by Jack Jouett , and only seven MPs fell into Tarleton's hands. His last post in that war was the defense of Gloucester Point in the context of the siege of Yorktown on the coast of Virginia, to which Cornwallis had withdrawn. After the surrender in late 1781, Tarleton returned to England, released on parole. All British officers with the exception of himself were invited to dinner by the former opponents after the surrender.

Politics and further careers

At home, Tarleton was first celebrated as a hero and the Prince of Wales was one of his friends. In 1784 he stood up for the parliamentary elections as a representative of Liverpool, but was narrowly defeated. He was successful in 1790 and remained Liverpool's representative until 1812 (with the exception of one year). Despite opposing views on the Revolutionary War, he supported Charles James Fox . As a speaker he devoted himself to military topics and the slave trade, through which Liverpool made a lot of money (not least his brothers Clayton and Thomas). He fought the opponents of the slave trade (abolitionists) wherever he could. With one exception, he mostly voted for the opposition: when the coalition of Charles Fox and Lord North came to power (government of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland ), he supported them and became governor of Berwick and Lindisfarne .

In 1794 he was major-general, in 1801 lieutenant-general and in 1812 general. He had military commands in Ireland and England. In 1815 he was raised to the hereditary nobility as Baronet , of Liverpool in the County of Lancaster , and in 1820 was Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath .

Others

Tarleton made a rich match in December 1798 with the marriage of the 4th Duke of Ancaster's illegitimate daughter, Susan Priscilla Bertie. But he had no children from the marriage. 15 years before that he had a tumultuous relationship with the actress and poet Mary Robinson (Perdita), the former lover of George IV. , Whom he seduced because of a bet. This connection was also childless.

He has been portrayed by both Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough . The antique leather helmet with a caterpillar pulled forward (English: Tarleton helmet), which he introduced to the British Legion and wore himself, was named after him and remained a style-defining feature for light troops in Great Britain until the end of the coalition wars.

After being attacked in the British press for the Battle of Cowpens in 1786 (his reputation had suffered mainly because of his affairs and gambling addiction), he wrote a history of his campaigns, Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America , in which he presents himself in a very favorable light and criticizes Cornwallis. Cornwallis only commented on this in his correspondence, but broke off all relations with Tarleton. A Colonel Roderick Mackenzie took on Cornwalli's defense: Strictures on Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton's History .

The 2000 film The Patriot by Roland Emmerich portrays Tarleton (called Colonel William Tavington, played by Jason Isaacs ) from an American perspective as a brutal butcher of civilians who burns down a church and the people who have fled there. Liverpool Mayor Edwin Clein, for whose constituents Tarleton is a national hero, then demanded an apology from the filmmakers.

He also appears in the 2006 film Amazing Grace , played by Ciarán Hinds , this time as a politician and main parliamentary opponent of the abolitionists ( opponents of slavery) under William Wilberforce .

literature

• William Dobein James: A Sketch of the Life of Brig. General Francis Marion
• Christopher Hibbert: Redcoats and Rebels
• Mark Boatner: Cassell's Biographical Dictionary of the American War of Independence, 1763-1783 , Cassell, London, 1966, ISBN 0-304-29296-6
• Robert Bass: The green dragoon - The lifes of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson , London 1957
• John Buchanan: The road to Guilford courthouse
• Dan Morrill: Southern campaigns of the american revolution

Web links

Commons : Banastre Tarleton  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• R. Thorne [Ed.]: Entry on Banastre Tarleton in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820 (1986)

Individual evidence

1. ^ John Burke, John Bernard Burke: A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland and Scotland (1841)