With Zeal and With Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775-1783 by Matthew H. Spring

Author:Matthew H. Spring [Spring, Matthew H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: History, General, Europe, Military, United States, Great Britain, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
ISBN: 9780806184241
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE BAYONET CHARGE

The Highlanders, observing that the rebels would not advance out of the wood, made a charge upon them, which was always a terror to the rebels, and put them to an immediate rout. The enemy could never endure to stand for any time to the bayonet, but if the King’s troops kept at a distance, they stood firing with musketry long enough.

Thomas Sullivan, From Redcoat to Rebel

The last chapter examined how the European campaigns of the Seven Years War confirmed the British Army’s long-standing reliance upon fire tactics as the key to success in infantry contests. In addition, it explored how the evidence does not admit of a firm conclusion that the rebels’ musketry was generally superior. Consequently, one needs to ask why the British infantry’s minor tactics in America were consistently turned on their head in favor of “the use of the bayonet, and a total reliance on that weapon.”1

“A RELIANCE ON THE BAYONET”

In the war’s opening campaigns, the most pressing reason for this striking shift from fire to shock tactics was the rebel commanders’ predilection for anchoring their ill-trained and unsteady troops behind fieldworks and walls, where they were nearly impervious to British musketry. The breakdown of Howe’s first attack at Bunker Hill underlined for attacking infantry the futility of trading fire with a covered enemy. According to Howe, when he sent the grenadier battalion forward against the lightly fortified rail fence that ran down toward the Mystic River, its defenders opened up “a heavy fire as soon as the line was advanced within distance of their shot.”2 The grenadiers’ fire discipline broke down under this sustained enemy musketry, and the attack degenerated into an unauthorized, uncontrolled firefight: “The grenadiers being directed to attack the enemy’s left in front, supported by the 5th and 52nd [Regiments], their orders were executed by the grenadiers and two battalions with a laudable perseverance, but not with the greatest share of discipline. For as soon as the order with which they set forward to the attack with bayonets was checked by a difficulty they met with in getting over some very high fences of strong railing, under a heavy fire well kept up by the rebels, they began firing, and by crowding fell into disorder; and in this state the 2nd line mixed with them.”3 It is instructive that the grenadiers succumbed to the temptation to return fire just as they broke ranks to cross one of the fences that obstructed their advance. By doing so, the inexperienced redcoats condemned themselves to an unequal musketry contest with a more numerous and less exposed enemy. Hence one veteran officer later rationalized the heaviness of the losses of the British and French attackers respectively at Bunker Hill and the Vigie on St. Lucia by judging, “Like young soldiers, both halted under the enemy’s fire, and both severely suffered for it.”4 Significantly, when Howe planned an assault on the rebel works on Dorchester Heights for the night of 5–6 December 1775, he envisaged that the troops would carry out the attack with unloaded arms.

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