Banastre Tarleton

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Banastre Tarleton bigraphy, stories - British Army general

Banastre Tarleton : biography

21 August 1754 – 15 January 1833

General Sir Banastre Tarleton, 1st Baronet, GCB (21 August 1754 – 15 January 1833) was a British soldier and politician.

He is today probably best remembered for his military service during the American Revolutionary War. He became the focal point of a propaganda campaign claiming that he had fired upon surrendering Continental Army troops at the Battle of Waxhaws. In a publication The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson by Robert D. Bass (published in 1952) he was given the nickname "Bloody Ban" and The Butcher, which has carried over into popular culture as being his nickname of the day.

He was hailed by the Loyalists and British as an outstanding leader of light cavalry and was praised for his tactical prowess and resolve, even against superior numbers. His green uniform was the standard of the British Legion, a provincial unit organised in New York in 1778. Tarleton was later elected as a Member of Parliament for Liverpool and became a prominent Whig politician. Tarleton’s cavalrymen were frequently called "Tarleton’s Raiders".

2006 Captured American battle flags sold at auction

In November 2005, it was announced that four rare battle flags or regimental colours seized in 1779 and 1780 from American rebels by Tarleton and still held in Britain, would be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York City in 2006. Two of these colours were the Guidon of the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons, captured in 1779; and a "beaver" standard – possibly a Gostelowe List Standard # 7 dating from 1778.Commander S. Tarantino of The "Beaver" Standard and two other flags (possibly division colours) were apparently captured at the Waxhaw Massacre. The flags were sold at auction on Flag Day in the United States (14 June 2006).

American Revolutionary War

In December 1775, he sailed from Cork as a volunteer to North America where rebellion had recently broken out triggering the American Revolutionary War. Tarleton sailed with Lord Cornwallis as part of an expedition to capture the southern city of Charleston.Wilson p.243 After this failed, he joined the main British Army in New York under General Howe. His service during 1776 gained him the position of a brigade major of cavalry.

Under the command of Colonel William Harcourt, Tarleton was part of a scouting party sent to gather intelligence on the movements of General Charles Lee in New Jersey. On 13 December 1776, Tarleton surrounded a house in Basking Ridge, New Jersey and forced Lee, still in his dressing gown, to surrender by threatening to burn the building down. Lee was taken back to New York as a prisoner and was later exchanged.

Capture of Charleston

After becoming the commander of the British Legion, a mixed force of cavalry and light infantry also called Tarleton’s Raiders, he proceeded at the beginning of 1780 to South Carolina, rendering valuable services to Sir Henry Clinton in the operations which culminated in the capture of Charleston. This was part of the ‘southern strategy’ by which the British directed most of their efforts to that theater hoping to restore authority over the southern colonies where they believed there was more support for the crown.

After his first major victory at Monck’s Corner, during the Siege of Charleston, an incident occurred that would transform itself into a critical part of the mythology surrounding the Colonel’s reputation. Following the battle, one of Tarleton’s soldiers perpetrated an act of attempted sexual assault against a civilian woman in the area, which was halted by one of his companions. This much of the story is well-documented and historical. However, the story was embellished as an anecdote in a biography of George Washington by the 19th-century American folklorist Washington Irving, who alluded to an argument between Tarleton and fellow British officer Patrick Ferguson over whether the culprit ought to be executed or released. According to Irving:

“We honor the rough soldier Ferguson,” Irving wrote “for the fiat of instant death with which he would have requited the most infamous and dastardly outrage that brutalizes warfare.” Tarleton, on the other hand, reveled in his own misconduct and that of his soldiers “for afterwards, in England, he had the effrontery to boast, in the presence of a lady of respectability, that he had killed more men and ravished more women than any man in America.” Irving himself would go on to be reintroduced to a new generation of readers through the late nineteenth century writings of Lyman Draper. There is no historical evidence of this disagreement ever taking place and was likely an invention of Irving's. However, the story, contained in both volumes, paired with Tarleton's alleged brutality at Battle of Waxhaws (see below), helped to create the common image of him as a brutal commander, uninterested in the conventions of civilized warfare.