Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.
After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.
I suppose form the Brits' point of view it can be called a "Civil War".
Originally posted by Ushgarak
It was a war mainly between internal factions inside the Colonies; it has little to do with being a British perspective. We intervened on one side and the French on the other, but the mechanisms were internal.
Uh...what? The Continental Army faced British troops all the way. I don't recall there being in skirmishes between rival colonial armies. There were certainly plenty of Royalist sympathizers, but they more or less laid low and lent behind-the-scenes support to the occupying British forces. Not much else.
I think you're right in some of your earlier posts about citing relative British indifference to the war. It was definitely not a hugely popular affair across the pond. But the forces that were here, were here to win. It certainly wasn't a forgone conclusion that the colonists would emerge victorious. In fact, the war looked lost for Washington by December of the first year of fighting, when the subscription terms for his men were running out, and his army had been booted from New York and New Jersey. It wasn't until the battle of Valley Forge and Trenton, that he regained some psychological momentum, and not until Saratoga that any of the rest of the world thought we had a chance--this is when we picked up the French.
All in all, Washington's adoption of the Fabian strategy is what saved our behinds. Continuously harass the enemy without letting him engage you in any one decisive battle. The object is to make the invader tire out and give up...or get careless. Washington's ability to keep the Continental army intact as a viable threat, plus our diplomats' eventual success in securing financial backing and military support from France were the tipping points.
I must agree with Dr. Zaius on the grounds of factuality; the American Revolution was neither inevitable nor was it an internal struggle between patriots and loyalists. Another misconception that has been repeated in this forum is that the British were indifferent to the war with America, which is at best partly true. Indeed, the contemporary population of Britain at that time was opposed to the war but the implications of defeat were enormous. If the British lost their American holdings, they would also be losing one of their chief sources of raw materials as well as one of their most lucrative sources of trade. Consequently, they deemed it fully necessary to aquatically invade their dissenting colonies with a troop size of around 40,000 led by General Howe.
To further enunciate the sheer predicament the Continental Army faced, their comprisal of militias each only had a subscription of 6 months meaning that Washington would constantly be yielding his veterans to a newer batch of militias who were devoid of training. On top of this daunting setback, they were drastically under-supplied to the extent that they had to remove lead from the tops of citizens' houses to make sufficient bullets. Perpetually untrained and far less supplied than their British opponents, chances of victory seemed even scanter due to the fact that they were outnumbered around four to one and that around of a third their army was disabled by a rampant outbreak of small pox.
Victory was rarely on the Continentals mind. Rather the two possibilities that were predominantly afforded to them in the beginning stages of the war were defeat or survival. Suffering successive losses at Manhattan, Long Island and Monmouth, the war seemed that would indeed end soon and the common prewar misconception of a quick victory against the British was slowly abandoned for the aforementioned realistic outcomes: defeat or survival.
The Continentals won through as Washington penned it himself, “a concatenation of causes,” which through sheer fortuitousness amounted to an American victory. This “concatenation,” although greater than its parts combined, was elementally derived from the following:
1) Change in Strategy. Although hell bent on meeting the enemy in an open battle in the early stages, which in turned prompted early defeat, Washington switched to the Fabian strategy, which was somewhat of a guerrilla warfare that attacked supply lines. It would also guarantee the survival of the Continental.
2) Ineptitude of British Generals. Howe, instead of pursuing Washington after his defeat in New York, decided to go into Winter quarters, allowing the American cause to endure. Other blunders include the British misconception that garrisons within rebellious cities would win the war, not the destruction of the Continental Army.
3) La Francais! The French provided two great Generals for the Continentals who would prove instrumental in success. La Marquis de LaFayette proved to be one of the Americans greatest commanders and the comte de Rochambeau, with his “Blue Book,” drilled the slovenly organized militias into well trained army.
The war’s uncertainty was most evident in the sheer acceleration from heavy American losses to American victory: Yorktown. Yorktown was not the finale of a collection of victories rather than the single decisive victory it took to win among an endless string of losses.
Yorktown was a classic hammer and anvil strategy. It worked so well because, for once, the French navy, which had elusively attacked British ports in the Carribean for most of the duration of the war, had finally arrived and with it the loans needed to sustain the war. Yorktown finally provided enough doubt in British creditors to cease the proliferation of the war, mostly on economic grounds.
No internal struggle? Then how come 1/3 of the population of the US fled to the Carribean or Canada during/after the war? There were no loyalist armies, as those loyalists enlisted for the British. They may have worn a red coat, but they were still loyalists nonetheless. I believe this is what Ush meant. Of course there were struggles between patriots and loyalists, as well as different native tribes which fought on both sides.
At the time, Canada, the Carribean and the 'US' were all part of the 'American' Colonies. Trade still continued with the other two, and indeed, the Carribean proved highly lucrative for sugar, etc while Canada provided wood and furs. The US itself was not considered overtly lucrative, hence one of the reasons the British imposed an expansion ban on the colonies, which was one of the reasons for the revolution.
To look at the war as the US and France vs the Brits is a tad simplistic.
Originally posted by Dr. Zaius
Uh...what? The Continental Army faced British troops all the way. I don't recall there being in skirmishes between rival colonial armies. There were certainly plenty of Royalist sympathizers, but they more or less laid low and lent behind-the-scenes support to the occupying British forces. Not much else.I think you're right in some of your earlier posts about citing relative British indifference to the war. It was definitely not a hugely popular affair across the pond. But the forces that were here, were here to win. It certainly wasn't a forgone conclusion that the colonists would emerge victorious. In fact, the war looked lost for Washington by December of the first year of fighting, when the subscription terms for his men were running out, and his army had been booted from New York and New Jersey. It wasn't until the battle of Valley Forge and Trenton, that he regained some psychological momentum, and not until Saratoga that any of the rest of the world thought we had a chance--this is when we picked up the French.
All in all, Washington's adoption of the Fabian strategy is what saved our behinds. Continuously harass the enemy without letting him engage you in any one decisive battle. The object is to make the invader tire out and give up...or get careless. Washington's ability to keep the Continental army intact as a viable threat, plus our diplomats' eventual success in securing financial backing and military support from France were the tipping points.
👆
Mithlond, you forget that predominantly the forces that comprised the British army were expeditionary in nature and came directly from England (with missionaries as well). As per your remark on the “expansion ban,” the Proclamation of 1763, the grounds for the creation of a demarcation was a means of protection from Native American hostilities towards the outward expansion (Britain didn't want to mess up relations with the Native Americans and French after the Treaty of Paris) as well as a means to organize the lands gained during the war (respectively into Quebec, East and West Florida and Grenada). It was not to prevent the colonists from spreading their "unlucrative" virus across Appalachia. Where did you dig that up? As per your comment that my assessment was "simplistic," let me for a moment concede to your point: During pre-war, one third of the nation was intensely Whig in their sentiments, a third had Tory sentiments and a third was undecided. However, after events such as the Boston Massacre the colonies became, without ambivalence, proponents of the revolution. Around 1778, around 40 to 50 percent were for the revolution leaving only 15 to 20 percent as loyalists. As compared to the 250,000 men who served at one point or another as a continental, only 50,000 throughout the entire war served as Loyalist militia men, who contrary to your belief did not enlist as British regulars. They fought along side but not as a redcoat. Dr. Zaius is right in saying that the loyalists who remained during the war played a secondary role of support for the British troops (you will note that most of the fights did not even involve loyalists militia) and mostly yielded their houses up to them. All in all, my point in my previous post was that the American Revolution was not inevitable and you, as well, seem to agree upon this point. A belief in the fatality of nature when it comes to history is the simplistic view, is it not?
France did little to help the Wareffort Militarily, only good support from them was Money/Arms. American Guerilla Warfare Ultimately won the War, the British had to keep sending over Troops/Arms, while the Americans supplied themselves mostly by Raiding British Supply Lines, and propaganda for supporters.
The British Weakened while the Americans grew Stronger.
Don't say the English Commanders sucked, they were very capable Generals, maybe not a Rommel, or a Patton, but still very good, just their type of Warfare was weak