In spite of his victory Morgan continued his retreat into North Carolina, Lord Cornwallis following hard at his heels, but sadly embarrassed by the loss of his light troops. Having been misled by false reports as to the difficulty of passing the rivers of North Carolina, Cornwallis marched into the extreme back country of the province so as to cross the waters at their head, and on the 1st February fought a brilliant little action to force the passage of the Catawba. At the close of the day Tarleton’s cavalry had an opportunity of taking revenge for Cowpens, and this time did not leave the Seventeenth to do all the work alone. From the Catawba Cornwallis pressed the pursuit of Morgan with increased energy, but failed, though only by a hair’s breadth, to overtake him. 1781. Nevertheless, by the time he had reached Hillsborough, the American troops had fairly evacuated North Carolina; and Cornwallis seized the opportunity to issue a proclamation summoning the loyalists of the province to the royal standard. The Americans replied by sending General Greene with a greatly augmented force back into Carolina. Thereupon the supposed loyalists at once joined Greene, who was thus able to press Cornwallis back to a position on the Deep River. On the 14th March, Cornwallis, always ready with bold measures, marched out with 2000 British to attack Greene with 7000 Americans, met him at a place called Guildford, and defeated him with heavy loss. The cavalry had no chance, though the Seventeenth was present at the action; but the British infantry was terribly punished: 542 men were killed and wounded in the fight; and Cornwallis thus weakened was obliged to retire slowly down the river to Wilmington, which he reached on the 7th April.

The memory of Cornwallis’s campaigns in the Carolinas has utterly perished. But although they issued ultimately in failure, they remain among the finest performances of the British rank and file. The march in pursuit of Morgan, which culminated in the action of Guildford and the retreat to Wilmington, alone covered 600 miles over a most difficult country. The men had no tents nor other protection against the climate, and very often no provisions. Day after day they had to ford large rivers and numberless creeks, which (to use Cornwallis’s own words), in any other country in the world would be reckoned large rivers. When, for instance, the Guards forced the passage of the Catawba, they had to ford a rapid stream waist-deep for five hundred yards under a heavy fire to which they were unable to reply. The cavalry on their part came in for some of the hardest of the work, being continually urged on and on to the front in pursuit of an enemy which they could sometimes overtake, but never force to fight; constantly engaged in petty skirmishes, losing a man here and a man there, but gaining little for their pains, and at each day’s close driven to their wits’ end to procure food for themselves and forage for their horses. 1782. By the time Cornwallis reached Wilmington the cavalry were about worn out with their work on the rear-guard, and, in Cornwallis’s words, were in want of everything. But not a man of the army complained, and all, by Cornwallis’s own testimony, showed exemplary patience and spirit. Meanwhile the Americans gave him no rest. No sooner was his back turned on South Carolina than they attacked his posts right and left, making particular efforts against Lord Rawdon at Camden. In fact, in spite of all the hard work done and the hardships endured with invincible patience by the British troops, the state of the country was worse than ever—armed parties of Americans everywhere and all communications cut. Cornwallis was painfully embarrassed by his situation. To re-enter South Carolina would be to admit that the operations of the past eighteen months had been fruitless. He decided that the best course for him was to continue his advance into Virginia, at the same time despatching messengers to warn Lord Rawdon that he must prepare to be hard beset.

Not one of these messengers ever reached Lord Rawdon. The perils of bearers of despatches at this time were such that they could only be conquered by more than ordinary devotion to duty. Fortunately an instance of such devotion has been preserved for us from the ranks of the Seventeenth. The case is that of a corporal, O’Lavery by name, who was especially selected to accompany a bearer of despatches on a dangerous and important mission. The two had not gone far before they were attacked, and both of them severely wounded. The man in charge of the despatch died on the road; the corporal took the packet from the dead man’s hand and rode on. Then he too dropped on the road from loss of blood, but sooner than suffer the papers to fall into the hands of the enemy, he concealed it by thrusting it into his wound. All night he lay where he fell, and on the following morning was found alive, but unable to do more than point to the ghastly hiding-place of the despatch. The wound thus maltreated proved to be mortal, and Corporal O’Lavery was soon past all human reward. But Lord Rawdon, unwilling that such gallant service should be forgotten, erected a monument to O’Lavery’s memory in his native County Down.

On the 25th of April Cornwallis, having refreshed his army, quitted Wilmington and marched northward to Petersburg, 20th May. where he effected a junction with two bodies, amounting together to 3600 men, which had been despatched to reinforce him from England and New York. With these he crossed the Appomattox in search of Lafayette, and pursued him for some way north, destroying all the enemy’s stores as he went. The Americans were now, in spite of their continued resistance in South Carolina, in a distressed and desponding position; but just at this critical moment their hopes were revived by intelligence of coming aid from France. Clinton having discovered this by interception of despatches, and learned further that an attack on New York was intended, recalled half of Cornwallis’s troops to his own command, and thus put an end to further operations in the South. It is significant that Clinton begs in particular for the return of the detachment of the Seventeenth; evidently he counted upon this regiment above others in critical times. Thus for the moment operations in the South came to a standstill and Cornwallis retired to Yorktown.

Meanwhile Washington had raised an army in Connecticut and marched down with it to his old position at Whiteplains, where he was joined by a French force of 6000 men which had occupied Rhode Island since June of the previous year. For more than a month Washington kept Clinton in perpetual fear of an attack, until at last he received intelligence that the expected French fleet under the Comte de Grasse was on its way to the Chesapeake. Then he suddenly marched with the whole army, French and American, to Philadelphia, and thence down the Elk River to the Chesapeake. De Grasse had been there with 24 ships and 3500 troops since the 30th, and had managed to keep his position against the British fleet of 19 ships under Admiral Graves. This brief command of the sea by the French virtually decided the war. 1782. Yorktown was invested on the 28th September, and on the 19th October Cornwallis was compelled to surrender. From that moment the war was practically over, though it was not until the 16th April 1783 that Washington received, from the hand of Captain Stapleton of the Seventeenth, the despatch that announced to him the final cessation of hostilities.

So ended the first war service of the 17th Light Dragoons. It will have been remarked that since 1779 little has been said of the headquarters of the regiment stationed at New York. The answer is that there is little or nothing to say, no operations of any importance having been undertaken in the North after the capture of Charleston. Yet it is certain that the duties of foraging, patrolling, and reconnaissance must have kept the men in New York perpetually engaged in trifling skirmishes and petty actions, whereof all record has naturally perished. A single anecdote of one such little affair has survived, and is worth insertion, as exemplifying from early days a distinctive trait of the regiment, viz. the decided ability of its non-commissioned officers when left in independent command. We shall find instances thereof all through the regiment’s history. Our present business is with Sergeant Thomas Tucker, who, when out patrolling one day with twelve men, came upon a small American post, promptly attacked it, and made the garrison, which, though not large, was larger than his own party, his prisoners. Tucker had accompanied the regiment from England as a volunteer; he went back with it to England as a cornet. Incidents of this kind must have been frequent round New York; and as seventeen men of the Seventeenth, exclusive of those taken at Yorktown, were prisoners in the hands of the Americans at the close of the war, there can be no doubt that the garrison duty in that city was not mere ordinary routine.

A few odd facts remain to be noted respecting the officers. The first of these, gleaned from General Clinton’s letter-book of 1780, is rather pathetic. It consists of a memorial to the King from the 17th Light Dragoons, setting forth “that they look upon themselves as particularly distinguished, by having been employed in the actual service of their country ever since the rebellion began in America. 1782. But its being the only regiment of Dragoons in this service, and their promotion being entirely confined to that line, they cannot but feel sensibly when they see every day promotion made over them of officers of inferior rank.” I cannot discover that the least notice was taken of this petition, hard though the case undoubtedly was; for many of these officers held high staff appointments in New York. Lieutenant-Colonel Birch was a local Brigadier-General, and towards the end of the war was actually in command at New York; but he seems to have gained little by it. On the other hand Captain Oliver Delancey made his fortune, professionally speaking, through his success as Clinton’s Adjutant-General from August 1781.

As to the detachments employed in the South enough has already been said. But it is worth while to correct the error into which other writers have fallen, that the men of the Seventeenth were not with Cornwallis in the campaign of North Carolina. The fact is rendered certain by the mention of twenty-five men in the melancholy roll of the capitulation of Yorktown, which twenty-five I take to be the remnant of the small body that was permanently attached to Tarleton’s legion. Moreover, it was not likely that Cornwallis, who was badly in want of light troops, would have left them to do garrison work with Rawdon. The loose expression “legion-cavalry” is so often used to cover the whole of the mounted force under Tarleton’s command, that it is frequently difficult to distinguish the detachment of the Seventeenth from the irregulars. But the men of that detachment were not willing to sink their individuality in the general body of legion dragoons. When their old regimental uniform was worn out they were offered the green uniform of the legion, but they would have none of it. They preferred to patch their own ragged and faded scarlet, and be men of the Seventeenth. Nor can we be surprised at it when we remember how the legion retired and left a handful of the Seventeenth to face the victorious Americans alone at Cowpens. This action gives a fair clue to the real seat of strength in Tarleton’s cavalry.

1782.

Lastly, it must be noted that, although the history of the American War is usually slurred over in consequence of its disastrous conclusion, yet to the rank and file of the British army there is far more ground therein for pride than for shame. British troops have never known harder times, harder work, nor harder fighting, than in the fifteen hundred miles of the march through the Carolinas. They were continually matched against heavy odds under disadvantageous conditions, yet they were almost uniformly victorious. The Americans fought and kept on fighting with indomitable courage and determination, but it was not the Americans but the French, and not so much the French army as the French fleet, that caused Cornwallis to capitulate at Yorktown.