by Gary Yee
They were within Gunshot of us on the other side of the gut; where they begin to Intrench themselves to our front; and kept continually firing at our advanced Sentries. … The Chausseurs which are Excellent good Marksmen, and have all Riffle Barrels, were in the front and killed or wounded no less than 7 or 8 of ye Rebels a day across the Gut. They were sure if any man came within shot of them to hit him, if he was not under cover.
While the Hessians and other marksmen got the better of Hand’s riflemen, Howe’s plans were upset and after six days he re-embarked his troops and landed further north at White Plains. Eventually Washington was forced to abandon Manhattan Island.
British General John Burgoyne proposed a plan to divide the colonies by marching down the Hudson and isolating the rebellious New England colonies. He assembled a 9,500-strong invasion force that was to march south from Montreal toward Albany. It was to unite with a British army marching north along the Hudson from New York: when the two met at Albany, the rebellious New England colonies would be isolated and could then be contained and crushed in detail.
Jäger rifle. (West Point Collection)
The march started in the third week of June 1777 and proceeded very slowly as the British had to build their road through the wilderness. When the American army offered battle at Saratoga, Burgoyne’s army had already been reduced to 6,000 men. Nonetheless he divided his army into three columns. The columns advanced over broken terrain, which made for poor communication and coordination between them.
The center column was a four-regiment-strong brigade under General Hamilton that bumped into Daniel Morgan’s riflemen. Morgan’s riflemen began picking off British officers in the advance guard. When the advance guard fell back, Morgan’s men rushed forward only to be repulsed by Hamilton’s main line. They fled like chickens before a fox and Morgan was almost in tears at the thought that his corps was destroyed. Sounding his rally cry, a turkey call, his men reassembled quickly around him and returned to battle. Reinforced by two line regiments, the battle became a fight over a clearing. As the British advanced, Morgan’s men poured fire that broke the British who fled. Morgan’s men would give chase, only to be met by the rallying British and their bayonets. The hunters were now the hunted and Morgan’s men ran to the safety of their own infantry. So the battle went like a ship tossed about in the sea with one side chasing the other across the battlefield and in turn becoming the chased.
British Sergeant Roger Lamb recalled “[a] constant blaze of fire was kept up, and both armies seemed to be determined on death or victory … Men and particularly officers, dropped every moment on each side. Several of the Americans placed themselves in high trees, and as often as they could distinguish a British officer’s uniform, took him off by deliberately aiming at his person.”
British artillery attempted to lay a suppressive fire against the Americans but they only brought themselves to the attention of Morgan’s riflemen:
Daniel Morgan.
The Royal Artillery suffered an astonishing loss in today’s action. One captain is dead; Captain Johns was fatally wounded and died on the next morning. Brigade Major Captain Bloomfield was shot through the cheek, under the tongue. General Phillips’ other three adjutants were almost all wounded, as were some of General Burgoyne’s. Somewhat more than thirty non-commissioned officers and artillerymen of the Royal Artillery were killed or wounded, of whom not a single man was less than five feet ten inches tall, all handsome individuals, of whom many died on the field of battle and were laid out in their true five feet eleven inches to six feet. Only one artillery officer was unwounded and 36 of the 48 artillery men were shot down.
Burgoyne was saved by his left wing, which was commanded by General Frederic von Riedesel. Riedesel, acting on his own initiative, marched his Hessians toward the sound of battle and provided Burgoyne the necessary manpower to drive the Americans from the field. The battle had cost the British 600 killed, wounded or captured. The Americans suffered 29 officers killed or wounded and 289 other casualties.
Eighteen days later, on October 7, Burgoyne was running low on supplies and was tired of waiting for the British force that was to march up from New York. Burgoyne was unaware that instead of marching north, Howe had embarked his men and sailed south to capture Philadelphia. Burgoyne decided to send a column to probe for the American left flank. He sent out two columns with General Riedesel leading one and General Simon Fraser the other.
At Bemis Heights, Fraser ran into Morgan’s riflemen, who resumed picking off the British officers. As the British force began to fall into confusion and hesitate, Fraser rallied them. His gallantry was noted by American General Benedict Arnold who instructed Morgan to take his best men and kill him. Morgan described what followed in his backcountry manner of speech.
Me and my boys had a bad time until I saw that they were led by an officer on a grey horse—a devilish brave fellow. Then says I to one of the best shots, says I, you get up into that there tree, and single out him on the horse. Dang it. Twas no sooner said than done. On came the British again, with the grey horseman leading; but his career was cut short enough this time. I jist tuck my eyes off him for a moment, and when I turned them to the place where he had been—pooh, he was gone!
With no one capable of rallying Fraser’s men, they fell back to their redoubt with the Americans snapping at their heels. Rifleman Tim Murphy is generally given credit for shooting Fraser.
Following the battle Burgoyne eventually decided to retrace his steps to Canada. Progress was very slow and as the American forces swelled with reinforcements, Burgoyne offered a convention to American General Gates who accepted it. The significance of the victory is that French recognition followed and along with it, military aid and an alliance. It also meant that the American Revolution was now a world war, with the French fighting the British both in the East Indies and the Caribbean.
Believing that a British military presence would sway the southern colonies back into British fold, the British sent Culloden veteran Donald McDonald to North Carolina to rally the Highland immigrants. McDonald assembled over 1,600 men including 300 riflemen; many of whom had disdain for the Lowlanders who joined the rebels. Anticipating joining up with a British invasion force, McDonald marched his men toward the coast. As McDonald was sick, command was passed down to Colonel Donald McLeod, whose vanguard was eighty Highlanders armed with broadswords. They were followed by another 1,000 men with the riflemen bringing up the rear. Many became disheartened along the march and deserted, reducing their number down to about 800.
Barring their path at Moore’s Creek Bridge was Colonel James Moore with a smaller force of about 1,050 men. McLeod joined the vanguard and stormed the bridge. The American line exploded in gunfire and McLeod is said to have been pierced by twenty balls. The surviving Highlanders retreated and the American pursuit mopped up and arrested 850 loyalists. Many Highlanders refused to respond to subsequent Crown attempts to rally them. When the British force finally appeared off of Cape Fear, it found no loyalist force awaited them and so they sailed off to capture Charleston instead.
Guarding the entrance to Charleston Bay was the unfinished Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan’s Island. Constructed of palmetto logs and sand, the men gallantly stood by their guns as nine British ships of the line attempted to bombard it into submission. To the surprise of the British, their cannon balls bounced off Moultrie’s walls. Moultrie guns, on the other hand, mauled the ships.
Supporting the British seaborne attack was an overland operation that was to assault the fort from its unfinished rear. This was anticipated by the Americans whose cannons peppered the British as they landed. The survivors were greeted by rifle fire. One rifleman, Morgan Brown, described the fight: “Our rifles were in prime order, well proved and well charged; every man took deliberate aim at his object. . . . The fire taught the enemy to lie closer behind their bank of oyster shells, and only show themselves when they rose up to fire.” One loyalist described being under fire: “It was impossible
for any set of men to sustain so destructive a fire as the Americans poured in on this occasion.”
Unable to capture Moultrie, the British departed and Charleston wasn’t captured until 1780 when an 8,500-man force, including two companies of jägers, landed north of Charleston, marched inland and approached the peninsula from the north. They forced the Americans behind their fortifications and then besieged them. The jägers silenced the American artillery and according to one jäger officer, the Americans “tried to mask their embrasures with cowhides; however, as soon as a hide moved, the bullets of the jägers who were posted with cocked and leveled rifles, struck into the embrasure. I have lost only one workman from the 42nd, who was killed from a double-barreled blunderbus from a house in the city, for we had chased the enemy away from behind their sandbags on the rampart.” Upon surrender, he also wrote, “An enemy officer assured me that they suffered most from the jägers and the shell and small-arms fire, and that our rifles balls killed and wounded people in the rear works and even in the city.” One jäger elaborated, “They confessed that since the opening of the third parallel our small-arms fire alone cost them between three and four hundred killed and wounded and that they could never open their embrasures without losses.” With Charleston’s fall the American southern army ceased to exist. Washington sent another army but it was crushed at Camden. A third under Nathaniel Green was sent to stop the British under Cornwallis on its march to recapture North Carolina. As he marched north, Cornwallis dispatched Patrick Ferguson with 1,000 musket-armed loyalists to protect his flank.
American long rifle. (West Point Collection)
Ferguson had been injured at Brandywine in September 1777 when a musketball shattered his right elbow. With Ferguson absent, his ad hoc rifle unit had been disbanded and, as Howe put it, “this barbarous weapon”—Ferguson’s breechloading rifle—was placed in storage. While he lost use of his right arm, Ferguson taught himself to write and fence with his left hand. Refusing to be invalided home, Ferguson became a specialist in training provincial troops.
After being commanded to protect Cornwallis’ flank, Ferguson boldly laid down the gauntlet, chastising the Americans for attacking the King’s outposts and warned them to desist lest he “hang their leaders and lay waste their country with fire and sword.” Instead of cowering, the backwoodsmen became outraged and assembled a force larger than Ferguson’s to march against him. Learning that he was outnumbered, Ferguson retreated to a hilltop called Kings Mountain where he felt himself perfectly capable of defending himself until reinforced. Instead, on October 7, 1780, the American riflemen crushed Ferguson’s loyalists and killed Ferguson. It was a triumph of a mostly rifle-armed force against a musket-armed one.
The American army shattered at Camden was still recovering when its commander, Green, divided it in the face of the enemy. He kept the larger wing and organized the other into a flying column led by Daniel Morgan. Morgan’s column was 120 miles away from Green’s army when he learned that the feared British Legion had been dispatched to crush him. In a battle that should have been another British victory, Morgan used every disadvantage to his advantage and instead crushed his enemy at Cowpens on January 17, 1781. Morgan posted his riflemen in the front line and instructed them to shoot the officers. Afterward they were to retreat uphill past Morgan’s second line, which was composed of militia. Knowing the militia’s propensity to run, Morgan had instructed them to fire two volleys before retreating behind his third line, which was composed of discharged Continental regulars.
The British advanced to within 50 yards before the riflemen dutifully picked off the officers and sergeants before retreating. As the British continued advancing, the men of the militia discharged two volleys before they too retreated. Thinking the Americans were fleeing, order was lost as the British broke into pursuit. Somewhat disorganized, they were stopped by a volley from the Continentals who stood their ground. The British re-formed and began returning volleys. When the British began a flanking movement, the Americans responded by refusing the flank. Other Americans mistook this as a retreat and started pulling back. Encouraged by what looked the American line collapsing, the British surged forward again and came within 50 yards of the Americans who suddenly spun around and fired a volley. They then lowered their bayonets and charged the stunned British, attacking them from both the front and their flank. British resistance collapsed in a stunning loss.
Despite the two setbacks at Kings Mountain and Cowpens, Cornwallis continued into North Carolina until he caught up with and defeated Green at Guilford Court House. It was a pyrrhic victory since Cornwallis suffered huge casualties himself. After resting on the battlefield, Cornwallis decided to march into Virginia where he could be reinforced and replenished by the Royal Navy.
As Cornwallis marched north from South Carolina, American forces under Lieutenant Colonel “Lighthorse” Harry Lee and Lieutenant Colonel Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion began attacking various British outposts. After an unsuccessful siege of Fort Ninety-Six, the Americans withdrew because of the approaching relief column. Despite a successful defense, Ninety-Six was abandoned, allowing the Americans to drive forward. They next attacked Fort Watson that was built atop an Indian mound on the Santee River. Lacking cannons and entrenching tools, they were unable to besiege it and instead used an innovation suggested by South Carolina’s Major Hezekiah Maham. They felled trees for logs and built a log tower that was filled with dirt and stones and a firing platform on top. Upon the tower’s completion, riflemen were posted to fire down into the fort. Since the defending British and loyalists lacked artillery with which they could knock the tower down, they found themselves defenseless and surrendered. This tactic was repeated successfully at Forts Granby, Galpin, and Augusta. The fall of these forts disrupted British communications with the interior and after September 1781 the British held only the coastal region of South Carolina.
Fort Sackville, near modern-day Vincennes, Indiana, was a base from which the British supplied their Indians who raided Virginia’s frontier region. Virginian George Rogers Clark petitioned Governor Patrick Henry for permission to raise a 500-strong force to raid the British outposts at Kaskaskia and Fort Sackville. After securing his commission, Clark raised only 175 men for his expedition. He captured Kaskaskia before marching on Fort Sackville. Lacking cannons, Clark’s men used the cover of darkness to dig pits close to the fort. At dawn, his men began firing into the fort’s loopholes and cannon ports. The pits were too close to the fort for the cannons to be depressed sufficiently and cannonballs sailed harmlessly over Clark’s men, while anyone who exposed himself at a cannon port was instantly fired upon by Clark’s riflemen. The fort’s defenders replied ineffectively with musketry. To prompt the British to surrender, Clark had four Indians tomahawked in view of the fort. Clark then warned that he could not promise to restrain his men when they stormed the fort. Intimidated, the British surrendered and only afterward learned that Clark’s force, which they had was believed larger than their own, was about equal in size.
French intervention finally tipped the scale against the British. At Chesapeake Bay, the French naval squadron drove off the Royal Navy, leaving Cornwallis isolated. Trapped at Yorktown, Cornwallis wanted a battle but Washington, acting on the advice of Rochambeau, laid siege instead and Cornwallis was starved into submission. While no more battles were fought in America, the war had become a global conflict with Spain and the Netherlands also fighting the British. It was another two years before the Treaty of Paris restored peace.
CHAPTER 2
RIFLES WIN ACCEPTANCE
1797–1815
“Where the musket ends, the rifle begins.”
BY 1789, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF Great Britain and the United States which had disbanded all rifle units in 1783, almost all armies had adopted the rifle in limited numbers. The British corrected this situation in 1797 when several understrength Germanic units were merged to become the rifle-armed 5/60 Royal Americans. They were followed shortly thereafter
by Coote Manningham’s Experimental Corps of Riflemen, which was drawn from various regiments. Trained as skirmishers and as riflemen, they fought at Ferrol in 1800 before being disbanded. The decision was reached to have a permanent rifle regiment and most officers of the Experimental Corps of Rifles were retained. New men were brought in and the unit became the Rifle Corps, later numbered the 95th Regiment and styled as the Rifle Brigade.
Besides being trained to fight as line infantry, they were also trained as expert skirmishers, in picketing, scouting, and patrolling. They became adept marksmen and some men held the targets for the others at 150–200 yards. This was inherently dangerous and there was one accident when the target holder was shot by an officer who had taken a man’s rifle so as to instruct the men. Like the Brunswick Oels or elements of the King’s German Legion, the 95th were intended to serve in the vanguard and drive off their French counterparts, the voltigeurs and tirailleurs. The 95th earned its laurels in Monte Video, Uruguay, in 1807.
We turn to one rifleman in particular who exemplified the best and the worst qualities of a soldier, Tom Plunkett. Plunkett was born in Newton County, Ireland, and at age twenty he enlisted in the Rifle Brigade on May 10, 1805. Described as a “smart, well-made fellow, about middle height and in the prime of manhood; with clear grey eyes and handsome countenance,” he was believed by some to be the “best shot in the regiment.” In his book Random Shots From a Rifleman, Kincaid described Plunkett as: “… a bold, active, athletic Irishman, and a deadly shot …” Initially sent to South America in 1807 under Lieutenant General John Whitelocke, Plunkett began to build his reputation as a rifleman there.