'1776' and Charles Lee

If there was no Washington, there would have been no Lincoln. True, but then without Washington the slaves might have been freed 30, or maybe even 60 years earlier. I also have no doubt that Washington was hell-bent on fighting after Valley Forge. There was also a strategic and tactical opportunity to do so. I would like to know, though, who Ronan considers the 'professionals' that disagreed with the Monmouth attack. I do hope Lee is not on that list. As a retired professional soldier I wouldn't put either he or Gates in that category. By “professionals” I meant the French/German officers in Washington’s Main Army. This was the same group that had earlier (March) counselled against the attack on Philadelphia or New York proposed by Wayne, Greene and Stirling, and instead recommended that the Continental Army stay at Valley Forge and keep up its training regime – a view that prevailed with Washington. Annoyingly, I cannot find the notes I took from Alden’s book (Charles Lee: Traitor or Patriot?) on the two pre-Monmouth councils of war, whilst Stryker (The Battle of Monmouth) only has the unhelpful comment that “several generals” agreed with Lee’s view of allowing the British to retreat unmolested. Stryker does list the principal supporters of Washington’s proposal to attack Clinton as Greene, Wayne and La Fayette. However, given Stryker’s view of Washington, it is perhaps not surprising that Lee’s supporters are not more fully listed; from memory, I think Steuben was one of them. Just out of interest, how is Lee NOT a professional soldier by the standards of his time? He attended a military school (IIRC, the same one that produced Bouquet and Haldimand), was commissioned at 12, served from the age of 15, and saw combat in North America, western Europe and eastern Europe, against three different types of enemy. Prior to the AWI, he had spent his entire working life as an officer in the British Army, in both regular and irregular units, and had also served in the Polish and Russian armies, including two staff appointments. He was also the only Continental officer to have previously commanded a formation bigger than a battalion. I’m not aware that he had another “day job” during those 25 years. Whilst you obviously dislike him as a person, and he undoubtedly did behave unprofessionally at times, that is no basis for discounting his formal training and experience. As someone who is frequently saying we must not judge the men of the past by today’s standards, surely you cannot dismiss the professional training and education of an officer in the 18th Century because it does not meet the same standards as the training of a 20th Century officer? A modern artillery officer in say, the US Army or USMC, probably has more formal training through his career than did Napoleon - would you deny that he was a professional? Categorizing Wayne as merely a 'hothead' is underestimating Wayne as a commander. He matured and learned during the war and he is one of the senior American commanders, along with Greene and Knox, who became professionals, just as the long-serving Continentals were also professionals by 1778-1779. Bulls Ferry? Green Spring? Also, I wonder how many "long-serving Continentals" there actually were in 1778-1779, given that three-year enlistments had only been introduced in 1777 and most of the men recruited under that regime only arrived in the summer and early autumn? One would assume most of the long-servers would have gone into the select corps, such as the Light Infantry. It should also be remembered how well Wayne did with the Legion of the United States, which he formed, trained, and led in 1794 and was for all intents and purposes an 'all arms' division as a permanent structure which only the French had among the armies of Europe at the time. The British Army in 1794 was a 'collection of regiments' just as it had been in 1775 with no permanent higher-level organizations. I’m not quite sure what the “apples v oranges” comparison with the British Army proves about Wayne; or indeed if it is actually accurate. The US Army was tiny in the 1790s and had to be literally re-created from nothing after the reduction of the Continental Army in 1783, and the disasters of 1790-91. Its size, the paucity of trained artillery and cavalry, the terrain over which it had to fight, and the influence of the French on the Continental Army (especially the light troops, which had been Wayne’s domain), made the “a la Saxe” legionary format a “no brainer”. Even then, faced with an untrained, irregular enemy only half as numerous, Wayne only achieved a comprehensive victory because the CO of the British fort took a political decision to lock out the retreating natives. By comparison, in 1794 the British Army was just over 130 years old and had, throughout that time, existed in an anti-military climate. It contained over 100 line infantry and cavalry regiments and, for historical reasons going back to Henry VIII, had a separate organisation for artillery and engineers. Unlike most of its European counterparts, it had primarily evolved to meet the specific requirements of garrisoning a global empire and doubling as a home police force and anti-smuggling agency (in which last role, infantry and cavalry frequently acted together). Physical dispersal, both abroad to meet the need to rotate overseas postings, and at home to split units into penny packets to support the civil authorities, and the Anglo-Saxon dislike of standing armies (manifested in political and financial constraints), mitigated against permanent larger structures in peacetime. However, according to Houlding (Fit for service), the six-battalion Dublin garrison had acquired a de facto brigade structure (two in fact) after the SYW, and held annual wargames in Phoenix Park – notably they were the first troops sent to America in 1775. The British also responded to the outbreak of the AWI by augmenting their two cavalry corps with matching numbers of dismounted troops; the 16th and 17th Light Dragoons were, in fact, the first true legionary corps seen in North America and a direct product of British experiences in Europe during the SYW. I believe the British also formed the first genuine “all arms” formation of the AWI (what might today be called a “regimental combat team”) in the form of the Queen’s Rangers. Incidentally, I’m not sure you are actually correct in stating that the French had permanent “all arms” divisions at any time in the Napoleonic Wars, let alone 1794; if you are referring to their corps structure, that came in much later – prior to that, their supra-regimental formations were ad hoc, like everyone else’s (in point of fact, although they were not permanent establishments, the Austrians were deploying mixed brigade- and division-sized formations of infantry and cavalry in the field in the Low Countries at that time). In the AWI, British leaders showed themselves equally capable of creating “all arms” formations – eg the advance/rear guards typically formed on the march by Howe and Clinton, comprising the Light Infantry battalions and Light Dragoon squadrons, both containing rifle-armed sub-units and the former having integral artillery.

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