BANASTRE TARTLETON

“Afterwards, in England, he had the effrontery to boast, in the presence of a

lady of respectability, that he had killed more men and ravished more women
than any man in America.” – Washington Irving

Every year on Fourth of July weekend I try to pick some badass freedom fries patriot
who spent the latter part of the 18thcentury grinding a bunch of taxatin'-without-
representatin' redcoats into hamburger sauce with a monster truck shaped like the
Statue of Liberty. This is the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the day that we
stopped giving a shit about royal weddings and started paying more attention to things
like freedom, justice, automatic weapons, and whatever the fuck Kendall Jenner had
for breakfast this morning.

Well, this year, it's time for something a little bit different. This year, we talk about
the toughest, most ruthless, most hated, and most badass warrior operating against
American nationalist interests during the 1780s – Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre
Tarleton, better known as "Butcher Tarleton." The Darth Vader of Great Britain in
the American Revolution, the guy they based the evil guy from The Patriot on, and a
man so intensely-hardcore that the patriots used to use the term "Tarleton's Quarter" to
mean "take no prisoners, ask no prisoners."
"Bloody Ban" was born August 21, 1754, the fourth child of the former Lord Mayor
of Liverpool. The Lord Mayor was a pretty successful merchant specializing
specifically in slaves and sugar, and Banastre attended Oxford University Law school
because of course the most hated man in America was a slave-trading
lawyer. Physically smaller than many of the other men in his school, Banastre made
up for it by having huge balls, and regularly beat the shit out of the other kids at
cricket, boxing, horseback riding, polo, tennis, and all the other sports you'd expect a
privileged Victorian-Era white British kid to be good at.

Tarleton's dad died shortly after Banastre graduated Oxford, and since Ban was only a
fourth child all he got from dad's will was five thousand Pounds Sterling – a pretty
sizeable chunk of change, but not exactly enough to retire on. In true badass fashion,
he blew all of his money on gambling, booze, chicks, and other cool things, then spent
his last 800 Pounds to buy an officer's commission in the British Army's First
Dragoons Guards Regiment. He was immediately shipped out to the New World to
deliver the King's merciful justice to some fucking traitorous colonists who dared defy
the wishes of His Majesty George III.
Back in the old days it was totally cool for a British nobleman to buy himself rank in
the Army, but Banastre bought himself the lowest rank in the Cavalry (Coronet), and
all of his promotions were on sheer merit. He was insanely brave, an excellent
horseman and tracker, and had a gigantic nutsack that put all other nutsacks to
shame. In December of 1775 he was a 23 year-old Major when he was ordered to
take a recon party and investigate the operations of Colonial General Charles Lee –
Banastre Tarlton didn't just recon that shit, he captured General Lee, who was in his
underwear at the time, then hauled him back to base to be interrogated personally. He
fought in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, helped the Brits win the Battle of
Brandywine, and was eventually made a Lieutenant-Colonel and given command of
his own unit – it was officially known as the "British Legion," but soon came to be
known simply as "Tarleton's Raiders." Which is a badass fucking unit name.

Formed in New York in 1778, Tarleton's Raiders was a group of around 500 Loyalist
Americans who weren't down with all that freedom and independence bullshit and
thought it was far better to be loyal to the British government than it was to be a
bunch of seditious insurgent fighter terrorists. Tarleton put British officer in charge,
drilled the Loyalists into a proper fighting force, then took them south to ruthlessly
root out traitors in the Carolinas.

"I wish you would get three legions, and divide yourself into three parts:
We can do no good without you."
- Lord Cornwallis, Commander of British Forces

Tarleton did a cool thing and dressed his cavalrymen out in green jackets instead of
redcoats, and before long the patriots in Carolina knew that when they saw
motherfuckers in green coats they were in some serious shit. Operating a light
cavalry, Tarleton's Raiders were known for daring attacks, even against greater
numbers, and for being complete dicks who burned the homes and farms of anyone
who dared talk shit about the King of England. In one particularly-awesome story,
Tarleton went to the home of a guy who had been a general in the Continental Army
but had been killed in action a year earlier. According to the legend, Tarleton met the
dead general's wife, had dinner with his family and servants, then stood up, politely
thanked the family for dinner, and ordered his men to burn the entire place into
fucking traitorous cinders.

The Raiders were also on the front lines of some serious engagements in the
Carolinas. In April 1780 their charged helped break American resistance at the Battle
of Monck's Corner, smashing the last of the U.S. cavalry in South Carolina and
opening the door for the British to capture Charleston in May. Only one group
survived the battle – the Third Virginia Cavalry, under Abraham Buford (great-uncle
of John Buford, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg). Buford had been ordered to fall
back and had a ten day head start on Tarleton, but the British tracker hunted the rebels
down, caught up to them, and personally led a charge where he took just 149 men
head-on into 380 demoralized American cavalrymen.

Butcher Tarleton had strict orders to root out all sedition in the Carolinas, and this guy
wasn't in the mood to go easy on a force that outnumbered him two-to-one. At the
Battle of Waxhaws, he attacked Buford's cavalry, utterly decimated them in hand-to-
hand combat, then ordered his men to continue firing even after the Americans
surrendered. I guess some U.S. dude shot Tarleton's favorite horse out from under
him, and he was pretty cheesed off about it. The Continentals lost 113 dead, 203
captured, and the British lost just 19 guys and 31 horses and I'm sure Tarleton just
mentions the horses just because he was still sore about being thrown from his mount
while leading a badass saber charge.

After this victory cemented Tarleton's reputation as an ultra-level dick who would
rather stab a traitor in the crotch than accept his reasonable surrender, the Butcher
continued fucking shit up in North and South Carolina. At the Battle of Camden he
broke another American force with a well-timed sword charge, then personally led the
operations to ride down fleeing U.S. forces and slash them to death from
horseback. He performed similar operations at Fishing Creek and Blackstocks, and
before long this guy became so terrifying in Carolina that men were actually
volunteering for the Colonial Army just because they were so afraid of what he would
do if he came to their town.

With all of these epic victories, it made sense that Tarleton would be a little
overconfident going into the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781. The dude was 26
years old and had spent the last three years bludgeoning the fuck out of patriots from
NYC to Charleston, and he was basically counting on his reputation to carry the
day. He led the attack, which was a crushing failure, the first of his career. However,
with his army disintegrating around him, Tarleton did perform one act of crushing
badassitude – he and his 54-man bodyguard were personally attacked by William
Washington, who engaged them with 300 of his best troops, but Tarleton fucked their
shit up in hand-to-hand combat. Tarleton personally wounded Washington, who was
so jacked up he had to call for infantry reinforcements just so he could disengage his
men from the asskicking they were receiving. To keep up his spoiled rich punk cred,
Tarleton would forever say that his defeat at Cowpens was the fault of his commander
for not providing him adequate reinforcements. Which I love.

Tarleton had two fingers shot off during the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, but just a
few weeks later he led a raid of Charlottesville, Virginia that captured several
members of the Virginia legislature. They almost got Thomas Jefferson as well (some
guy rode 40 miles in the middle of the night to save him) but he did capture
Jefferson's house at Monticello. To his credit, he didn't torch this one.

Despite his bravery, Tarleton eventually found himself stuck in Yorktown with
Cornwallis, and he was wounded again in a hand-to-hand swordfight with some
French cavalry outside the city and didn't see action again until after the British
surrender. Now, it was customary in the good old days of military gentlemanship for
victorious generals to invite their defeated counterparts to dinner following the war,
but as an awesome post-war side note Banastre Tarleton was the only British officer
who didn't receive an invitation to dinner. He probably would have burned the house
down anyways, so I guess this makes sense.

Well, unlike many big-time action movies (including The Patriot), this story
awesomely doesn't end with the bad guy dying. Far from it. After the Revolution,
Tarleton went home, was knighted, promoted, and elected to Parliament for
Liverpool, where he became a vocal advocate of not ending the slave trade. Known
as Sir Banastre Tarleton, First Baronet as of 1815, he wrote his memoirs, then spent
15 years hooking up with the most famous actress in England – a woman he only went
out with because a friend bet him that he couldn't get her. He lived to be 78 .