Banaster Tarletn – Wikipedia

Sir Banastre Tarleton, 1. 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 also notorious for his warfare with ruthless hardship against the civilian population (nickname From the American side butcher (Butcher) or bloody Ban ). He is one of the most controversial figures in the Revolutionary War.

Banastre Tarleton was one of six children from the wealthy merchant, ship owner and slave dealer John Tarleton from Liverpool and his wife Jane (born Parker). ^[first] His siblings included John and Clayton Tarleton. He studied the rights at the Middle Temple in London and from 1771 until his father died in 1773 in Oxford. Even then, he was more interested in sports than in books. Since he had lost the inherited 5000 pounds in the game within a year, he had to enter the army in 1775 and bought his mother’s money as a cavalry officer for the 1st Dragoon Guards (“Green Dragoons”), but soon turned out to be As capable and “good on horseback”.

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

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 in reconnaissance rides as Brigademajor of the 16th Light Dragoons in New York, which should explore General Charles Lee’s movements in New Jersey. On Friday, December 13th, he surrounded a house in Basking Ridge where Lee was in and forced his capture to burn it down. To do this, he became the captain of the 1st company of the Liverpool Royal Volunteers (79th Foot).

His reputation had now risen so much that at the end of 1779 – although still quite young, penniless and from the civic stand – as a lieutenant colonel of the newly shaped “British Legion”, he became a troops made of light infantry and cavalry from the British compared to loyal Americans New York and Pennsylvania, soon also called “Tarleton’s Raiders” (“RAID” are called quick reconnaissance/prey rides of the cavalry in English). They wore green uniforms, the Tory colors. With them he operated in South Carolina in the same year to support General Henry Clinton’s campaign, which led to the conquest of Charleston. During the sea crossing, almost all of its horses robbed, he quickly repeated new and sub -tape all the replenishment routes to Charleston very effectively.

On May 29, 1780, he overpowered a militia group from 350 to 380 Virginians under Abraham Buford, which was marched to Charleston’s relief after the city of the city, on May 29, 1780. In violent kicks (105 miles in 54 hours), Tarleton used them and caught up with a 10-day lead. Buford initially refused to surrender to the number of troops and continued his march, but was forced to the task by strong losses. From the American perspective, Tarleton then ignored the white flag and continued the massacre so as not to strain prisoners in the further advance. According to his own information, chaos broke out in his troop after his horse was shot down under him, and his people believed that he was dead. In the end, 113 Americans were killed and captured in 203, with 150 being left behind due to too much wound. Tarleton’s losses were 5 dead and 12 wounded. The little skirmish was by the British Battle of Waxhaw Creek christened by the Americans Waxhaw massacres or Buford massaker . It contributed a lot to motivation and revenge in the American militias. Similar to the “Magdeburg Pardon” in the Thirty Years’ War, one spoke of “Tarleton’s grace” (in the sense of no mercy), “Tarleton’s Quarter”. Tarleton itself and Cornwallis was the reputation as a hard -fitting group.

Tarleton was essentially involved in the victory of Cornwallis in the Battle of Camden August 1780, where he relentlessly followed the fleeing militias. At Fishing Creek, too, he won Thomas Sumter, a four -superior, 1000 -superior partisan army on August 19, which he later pursued until almost complete annihilation. In South Carolina, Tarleton in Francis Marion (1732–1795) had a guerrilla opponent that he never got to grasp: he said that the devil had to be in the group with the “damn old fox”, and in fact the nickname from Marion afterwards was “Swamp Fox” (swamp fox). After the defeat of Major Ferguson on Kings Mountain, Cornwallis retired to South Carolina. Tarleton, who failed for several weeks for malaria or yellow fever in September, kept the lines of the connection open and was busy in November to punish people who had been released on slogans, not to fight against the British king again. From the perspective of the Americans, he was harmless through a tactic of the burned earth on the civilian population because he could not grasp Marion, which brought him more against himself and the British. Reports about his brutal approach made the round, so he is said to have only dined with the widow of the late American general Richardson in order to then burn down the house, cattle and fields (November 1780, at Nelson’s Ferry). Many British officers were also repelled from his approach.

At Blackstock Farm, a new collision with Sumter, which had set up a new partisan army, came in November 1780. Here Tarleton suffered larger losses and was wounded himself (like Sumter without Tarleton knew that), but proclaimed a victory. When the Americans under Nathaniel Greene shared their regular army of around 2000 men in January 1781, Tarleton was to attack the group under Brigadier Daniel Morgan with a unit reinforced to 1100 men. In this campaign, his unit was almost rubbed in the Battle of Cowpens. He attacked directly and ran Morgan, who had positioned himself well and made his first line of volunteers in an apparent escape behind a second line of experienced “Continentals”, into the trap. Tarleton lost 800 men, but he himself managed to escape. He was heavily criticized by other British officers, so that he asked for his dismissal and war court proceedings, which Cornwallis, who wanted to keep him as a shiny cavalry leader, but refused.

He reorganized his British legion and was used by Cornwallis in his earlier tactical use. After successes in Skarmützeln at Tarrants House and in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in March 1781, in which he lost two fingers with a shot, he marched to Virginia with Cornwallis. In a raid to Charlottesville, he tried to catch governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia parliament. However, these were warned by a nightly ride of 40 miles by Jack Jouett, and only seven MPs fell in Tarleton’s hands. His last post in this war was the defense of Gloucester Point as part of the siege of Yorktown on the coast in Virginia, where Cornwallis had withdrawn. After the surrender at the end of 1781, Tarleton, who was released on slogan, returned to England. After the surrender, all British officers were invited to the diner by the former opponents.

At home, Tarleton was initially celebrated as a hero and was the Prince of Wales as his friends. In 1784 he had himself set up for the elections as a representative of Liverpool, but was narrowly beaten. In 1790 he was successful and remained the representative of Liverpools until 1812 (with the exception of one year). Despite the opposing views of the War of Independence, he supported Charles James Fox. As a speaker, he devoted himself to military issues 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), where he could only. 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-Benck, 3rd Duke of Portland), he supported them and became governor of Berwick and Lindis fern.

In 1794 he became Major General (Major-General), 1801 lieutenant general (Lieutenant-General) and 1812 General. He had military commands in Ireland and England. In 1815 he was raised as a baronet, of Liverpool in the County of Lancaster, to the hereditary nobility and became Knight Grand Cross of the Bath Order in 1820.

Tarleton made a rich game in December 1798 with the marriage of the illegitimate daughter of the 4th Duke of Ancaster, Susan Priscilla Bertie. But he had no children from marriage. For 15 years he lived in a stormy relationship with the actress and poet Mary Robinson (Perdita), the former lover of George IV, which he seduced due to a bet. This connection was also childless.

It was portrayed by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. The leather helmet, which he introduced at the British Legion and worn, with a caterpillar (English: Tarleton helmet), was named after him and remained in the style of Great Britain until the end of the coalition wars.

After he was attacked in the British press in 1786 primarily because of the Battle of Cowpens (his reputation had suffered primarily because of his affairs and gambling addiction), he wrote a story of his campaigns, Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America , in which he is in very cheap light and criticizes Cornwallis. Cornwallis only commented on this in his correspondence, but broke all relationships with Tarleton. A Colonel Roderick Mackenzie took over Cornwalli’s defense: Strictures on Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton’s History .

The film The Patriot From the year 2000 by Roland Emmerich, Tarleton (called Colonel William Tavington, played by Jason Isaacs), is a brutal butcher of civilians who burns a church and the residents that burns down there. The mayor of Liverpool, Edwin Clein, for whose voters Tarleton is a national hero, asked for an apology from the filmmakers.

He also comes in the film Amazing Grace from 2006, played by Ciarán Hinds, this time as a politician and main opponent of the abolitionists (slaehic gnins) under William Wilberforce.

• Robert Bass: The green dragoon – The lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson . Redman, London 1958.
• Mark Boatner: Cassell’s Biographical Dictionary of the American War of Independence, 1763–1783 , Cassell, London, 1966, ISBN 0-304-29296-6.
• Christopher Hibbert: Redcoats and Rebels. Grafton Books, London 1990, ISBN 0-246-13467-4.
• And Morrill: Southern campaigns of the american revolution. Nautical & Aviation Pub. co. Of America, Baltimore 1993, ISBN 1-877853-21-6
• John Buchanan: The road to Guilford courthouse. Wiley, New York 1997, ISBN 0-471-16402-X.
• William Dobein James: A Sketch of the Life of Brig. General Francis Marion. Kessinger Publishing [Whitefish, MT] [2000?].
• John Knight: War at Saber Point: Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion. Westholme , Yardley, PA 2020, ISBN 978-1-5941-6352-4.

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