Here is the best I can offer for a cite. Not exactly solid evidence, I know.
It’s an interesting article anyway though.
The model for the British officer was Banastre Tarleton. Tarleton was no saint, but he was also not the embodiment of evil portrayed in the film. I would have preferred a film with more rounded, less cartoonish characters.
More on Tarleton.
My impression is that Tarleton’s ruthlessness, while not inconsiderable, was exaggerated by the Americans as a useful propaganda device.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned these yet:
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The British Dragoons in the movie wore red, whereas in real life Dragoon uniforms were green.
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Multiple scenes depict British cannons firing cannonballs into crowded areas of the battlefield. In a real battle, the cannons would have been loaded with packed shot, not with actual balls, which were reserved for knocking down walls.
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In all of the movie battles soldiers often fire their weapon, reload, and fire again. In reality, soldiers would often drop their rifles after the first shot, and charge into battle using either a sabre or bayonet.
2 Not quite. I haven’t seen the movie, so you could be correct, however, grape and other forms of small shot were only used when the cannon were close to the action. The spread of small shot tended to disipate the effect at any distance. On the other hand, solid shot, fired into a crowd, will punch a very serious whole through that crowd, killing everyone in its direct path. (There is testimony from the Civil War of a shot falling through several files of soldiers, tearing off the first man’s head, ripping through the second man’s chest, disembowling the third man, and (literally) cutting off the fourth man at the knees. If that shot then bounced into a formation behind the one described, it probably continued its carnage.
3 Again, the tactic depends on the particular battle. As mentioned on a different thread, recently, Greene and Morgan cooperated in devising the tactic of requiring at least one (sometimes two) rounds from militia before allowing them to retire–at which point the Continental regulars took up the fight.
Charging into a formation, using bayonets or pikes, was the preferred tactic, provided the first round of musketry tore holes in the opposing line. At Saratoga, the British and the Americans faced each other across a forest clearing (about 1,000’ by 500’), firing for around three hours, without mounting a significant charge because nearly every unit that assembled to charge was mowed down as soon as they entered the clearing. The battles of King’s Mountain and Cowpens (on which some of the Patriot scenes were based) were, indeed, musket/rifle battles for the most part, with bayonet charges used only after the American firearms had torn huge gaps in the British lines.
Technical nit-pick: it is unlikely that a soldier would drop his musket to charge with a bayonet–the musket was the device to which he attached the bayonet. Similarly, men wielding sabers (officers and cavalry) did not carry muskets which they could throw down.