A while back I read a statement online–perhaps on this very message board–that George Washington never faced the best generals Great Britain could field, precisely because those better generals were either sympathetic to the colonies, or else believed a war was not winnable and therefore declined to assume command in the first place. It seems I read this after much was made in the news about a group of British historians declaring Washington to be the most dangerous military opponent the British Empire ever faced.
I’ve read a handful of books on the American Revolution, and don’t recall ever encountering the argument that the British lost because the army was being led by its B team of strategists in the form of Clinton, the Howells, and Cornwallis. If there’s any truth to the argument, could someone list some of the people in the British high command who were supposed to be so much better? I’d like to read up on them. Thanks.
Being dead is usually considered a barrier to good Generalship.
I suspect the person that put forth the argument was referring to Amherst, who was a previously successful British military leader who was offered a command during the Revolution but turned it down because he thought Britain would need to commit a much larger force then Parliament was willing to to win.
I don’t really know enough about the period to gage howe good a general he was relative to the guys that actually ended up leading the British effort. But the list of other successful British army leaders (as opposed to naval leaders, of whom there were many) who were both active in 1776 and didn’t command forces during the Revolution is pretty short, so I think Amherst is the person the OP’s interlocutor had in mind.
Clive was an adventurer, not a general. It’s telling that the man the British government eventually sent over to clean up the mess he made was one General Cornwallis.
This is not my best time period. But I’m trying to think who those great generals that sat the war out would have been.
Clive and Wolfe, heroes from the previous wars, were dead. I’m trying to think of anyone who was particularly successful, who could have served and didn’t. And I’m drawing a blank.
And then there was the next generation. There were a number of successful generals who fought against the French Republic and Napoleon. But everyone I can think of, was too young during the American Revolution.
There were several flag officers who refused to serve, most famously Amherst, Keppel, and Effingham. But I don’t think any of them were particularly great. And of the generals who did serve, a fair number of them opposed the war including Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton but generally “did their duties.” By and large it seems to me that the British did field their best team.
Possibly. But he never really seemed terribly better than any of the Generals who commanded during the revolution. And in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army he is generally credited for leaving the army in a terrible shape as the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars got started. He’s not someone I would consider the A-team in comparison to Howe or Clinton.
Aside from Amherst the only notable contemporary name that is immediately coming to mind is the pretty capable Eyre Coote ( whose nephew actually did fight in America as a teenager ). But Coote was pretty much purely an Indian hand and was fully engaged a half a world away at the time.
There were contemporaries of GW that would have surely been more dangerous, like Alexander Suvorov. But he wasn’t British ;).
Thank you for the replies. I’m fairly familiar with the time period, but mostly with the American side of things. I wonder if the writer I read might have actually confused someone like the Duke of Wellington, who did refuse a command in North America (War of 1812) in preference for the European war a generation later. Arthur Wellesley would have been a child during the Revolutionary period, of course.
I was under the impression that Cornwallis was highly regarded, but basically screwed over by Clinton who failed to support him.
In favor of Washington as a talented general, I will say that he learned from his mistakes. Yorktown was not the end of the war, just Cornwallis’ army’s participation.
General Cavendish refused an American command also, although, given his record, that maybe wasn’t that big a loss. Admiral Keppel also refused to go to America, even though he commanded the Channel Fleet, and most infamously fought against the French in the battle of Ushant.
Washington was certainly not the most dangerous general the British Empire ever faced, that is absurd. I’d give it to Napoleon before George for starters.
The accomplished generals in Britain abstained because of the nature of the conflict. They would be fighting Englishmen on strange soil for an undetermined length of time, for undetermined goals, to undetermined ends. Meanwhile the English themselves with a parliamentary government would never be in direct threat. There is no glory in killing your own countrymen, and plenty of scorn.
The ambitious were the only ones who attempted it, but lets not blame Washington for that.
Cornwallis was both of these, but served anyway from his sense of duty. Barbara Tuchman thinks that his passivity in the siege of Yorktown may have been partly caused by a sense of futility of winning the war.
Lord Jeffery Amherst would probably be the main example. He was a very good general and had fought in America during the Seven Years War. And he was considered for the command of the British forces in America during the Revolution.
Burgoyne wasn’t, I wouldn’t say, a bad strategist or tactician. He had done really well in Spain. Even at Saratoga, he didn’t make any serious strategic mistakes. The failure of the New York Campaign was logistical and an intelligence failure. He didn’t know the actual size of the army facing him, and General Howe failed to support him. If you want to blame anyone for the loss at Saratoga, blame Howe and Germain, not Burgoyne.