Banastre Tarleton

Banastre Tarleton commanded the British Legion in the southern campaigns of the American war and became the most hated British officer in America, partly on the evidence and partly on the propaganda. He was a Liverpool merchant's son who gambled away his inheritance in a year, bought a cornetcy, and turned out to be a natural cavalry commander: fast, aggressive, and willing to march his men through the night. He captured General Charles Lee in a raid in 1776. At the Waxhaws in May 1780 his troops cut down a Virginia regiment that was attempting to surrender, killing well over a hundred; Tarleton's own account blames a loss of control after his horse was shot, and Tarleton's Quarter became a rebel recruiting cry and a battle shout meaning that none would be given. At Cowpens in January 1781 Daniel Morgan used exactly that reputation, placing militia in front with orders to fire twice and withdraw, which drew Tarleton's line into a charge that ran onto Continental regulars and cavalry, destroying his command in under an hour. He surrendered with Cornwallis at Yorktown. He then sat in Parliament for Liverpool for over twenty years, where he defended the slave trade the city lived on, and he was made a baronet. Cowpens is still taught as a model of using an enemy's known temperament against him. Tarleton's own history of the campaign, published in 1787, blamed Cornwallis, and Cornwallis's officers replied in print. He kept a long relationship with the actress and writer Mary Robinson, who had been the Prince of Wales's mistress and who wrote about it. He died a general at seventy-eight, having seen the trade he defended abolished twenty-six years earlier.

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