Birth of the "Green Dragoon"...

On this day in 1754, Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton is born...

In December 1775, Banastre Tarleton sailed from Great Britain to North America, where rebellion had recently broken out, triggering what would become the American Revolutionary War. Tarleton sailed with Lord Cornwallis as part of an expedition to capture the southern city of Charleston, South Carolina (during the first attack on the city). The British failed in taking this city during this expedition. He soon after joined the main British Army in New York to serve under General Howe. Tarleton was later part of a scouting party sent to gather intelligence on the movements of American General Charles Lee in New Jersey. On 13 December 1776, Tarleton surrounded the tavern that Lee had been staying in at Basking Ridge, New Jersey. He forced Lee, still in his night clothes, to surrender by threatening to burn the building down.

Tarleton soon earned command of the British Legion. This was a mixed force of cavalry and light infantry troops. This group earned the nickname, “Tarleton’s Raiders”. He proceeded at the beginning of 1780 to South Carolina, rendering valuable services to General Clinton in the operations which culminated in the eventual capture of Charleston.

On 29 May 1780, Tarleton, with a force of 150 mounted soldiers, overtook a detachment of 380 Virginia Continentals led by Abraham Buford. Buford refused to surrender or even to stop his march. Only after sustaining heavy casualties did Buford finally order the surrender. According to American accounts, as the American’s brought out the white flag of surrender, Tarleton’s horse was struck by a musket ball and fell. This gave the loyalist cavalrymen the impression that the rebels had shot at their commander while asking for mercy. Enraged, the loyalist troops charged at the Virginians. The loyalists attacked, carrying out "indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the most ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages." Tarleton's men stabbed the wounded where they lay, and butchered many of the men that were begging for quarter. In the end, 113 Americans were killed and another 203 captured, 150 of them, so badly wounded that they had to be left behind. The British called the affair the Battle of Waxhaw Creek, while the Americans called it the "Buford Massacre", or the "Waxhaw Massacre."

Tarleton became the most feared officer in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. The treatment of Patriot prisoners of war by Tarleton and his loyalist troops in the Southern Campaign led to the coining of the phrase, “Tarleton’s Quarter”; which came to define the British brutality experienced by the Americans during the last years of the war …



Colonel Banastre Tarleton