Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War

by Hugh Bicheno

This is the story of a vicious struggle between brothers, friends and families which forged a new nation. Using the most up-to-date scholarship, vivid eye-witness accounts and original documents, this book tells the history of the passionate, violent and bloody events of the 1770s. The book argues against the commonheld view that the war of independence was the American people's struggle for liberty against an oppressive colonial power. The truth is far more interesting. Many Americans were loyal to the Crown throughout the war. Men and women often chose sides not because they wanted freedom, but because they wanted their neighbour's land. This book explores intriguing paradoxes through personal stories of women such as Jane McCrea, whose fiance was a British officer but whose brother was a rebel soldier. There are stories representing every interest Redcoats, loyalists, rebels, neutrals, French soldiers, Indian warriors, slaves, landed gentry and sharecropper. The text explains how the real victors of the War of Independence were the French, not the Americans, how the British Army could have continued the land war, and how intervention by the French Navy was decisive in the British defeat. Slave uprisings supported the British against the rebels, because of their brutal treatment by the colonists and many Native American tribes remained loyal to the British, while both loyalists and rebels betrayed the tribes who had supported them. When the conflict began very few believed the 13 colonies would gain independence - in Britain and in America. There were many mutinies in the rebel army including one in New Jersey which had to be put down by a large force sent by a man whose name has become synonymous with the conflict - General Washington.

Genres: History, Military History, American Revolution, American History, War, American, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Hugh Bicheno graduated from Cambridge and later joined the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He is now a political risk analyst and an historian of conflict.

Reviews

[John Matthew IV · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book.

Great maps!
Well researched. I appreciated the references to other historians.

There is a pro-British, anti-American bias but I can live with that.

However, it was a tough, dry read. The next book I read was just a joy in comparison.

p. xx: "I grow increasingly impatient with historians whose wars have no battles, or whose battles have no maps."
p. xxviii: "The next day they brought in more victims and added them to the pile of mutilated corpses inside the little schoolhouse and then burned it along with the rest of the village in an futile attempt to conceal their crime." -- Sounds like something from Vietnam
p. 2: "The fear of a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world -- a conspiracy believed to have been nourished in corruption and of which, it was felt, oppression in America was only the most immediately visible part."
p. 2: "The Founding Father of the paranoid style and the foremost advocate of violent confrontation with Britain was the Bostonian Samuel Adams."
p. 6: "Nonetheless they would not necessarily have been moved to armed rebellion had it not been that their own status in colonial society was threatened by incendiary proselytism and unchecked mob action."
p. 15: "[The rebellion] would almost certainly have ended with a compromise settlement in 1777-78 if France had not intervened overtly."
p. 17: "Those who respect established authority and value order are at a severe disadvantage when these come under assault, because they look to the authorities they respect to restore the order they value."
p. 17-8: "Against this, had the Rebel cause enjoyed the popular support, nobility of purpose and divine blessing that constitute three sides of the Foundation Myth pyramid, a devout and effective force of property owners akin to Cromwell's Ironsides should have emerged to build the fourth."
p 30: "[Dr. Joseph Warren]'s body was later identified by Paul Revere from some dental work he had performed, the first recorded example of what is now a common-place of forensic medicine."
p. 41: "The Declaration represented an irrevocable act of treason, causing reluctance even among those who voted for it to append their signatures."
p. 42: "Although the war conducted by Sandwich at the Admiralty, Germain at the Colonial Office and the Howes in America could undoubtedly have been waged better in the absolute, they were among the most able men of their class at this time, and there is little reason to believe any other combination -- under North -- would have produced a better result."
p. 53: "The loss of Fort Washington was the culmination of a series of gross command blunders, all deriving from an amateur's underestimation of what a properly handled professional army could do."
p. 58: "When the moment came he was saved because armies are like enormous dogs, anxious to believe their master knows what he is doing and heartbreakingly willing to give him another chance even after he has repeatedly abused their trust. The glory in the events that followed was not the Washington managed to redeem months of defeat and retreat with a resounding victory at the eleventh hour, but that when he decided to strike back there were just enough men willing to follow his lead. There should be a monument to them standing proud of all the other memorials in the capital named for their general, because his fame, that city, and all it contains, stand on their faithful shoulders."
p. 60: "Howe's desire for order made good military sense as well, because regular armies by their nature cannot wage revolutionary war."
p. 62: "British officers at this time did refer to Washington as 'the fox,' not because they esteemed him either clever or quick, but because they thought he had dived into his earth, whence the Hessian hounds would dig him up in the 1777 campaigning season."
p. 69: "For the duration of the war the Continental Army was obliged to take what it needed, while the cash-paying British Army obtained whatever it wanted from inhabitants who were restrained only by the threat of Rebel reprisals. Although Clinton and Cornwallis were later to find it a convenient excuse for inaction and surrender respectively, there was never any serious shortage of necessities on the British side, while Washington's army was at times immobilized and wracked by mutinies because of constant want amid an indifferent or hostile civilian population."
p. 82: Germantown: "It was a severe, demoralizing and predictable defeat that pitilessly exposed Washington's limitations."
p. 84: "For the Rebels, a conquest of Canada depended on the fantasy that French Roman Catholics would rally to a furiously Anglo-Protestant cause."
p. 90: "It was the shipping shortage which had retarded Howe's reinforcements from Europe, further delaying his offensive. It was very probably the pressure on the dockyards which had prevented Carleton from being supplied early and adequately with the means of commanding Lake Champlain. Perhaps the influence of the ocean was never again to appear in so visible a form during the course of the war. But always the cold wastes of the Atlantic were to exert their invisible stranglehold on the British operations."
p. 112: On Franklin: "Along with the rest of the American delegation he was raking in commissions on supplies bought with French money, peculations more than tolerated by Vergennes, and had much to lose by an early peace. ... In sum, a pioneer PR man whose principal client was himself."
p. 115: "Vergennes' aim was to force the Royal Navy to concentrate in home waters, thus unable to protect British interests in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean."
p . 115: "Washington was alert to this, and wrote to warn that, treaty or no, a Canada won with the help of France would become French again."
p. 115: Washington: "It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted further than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it."
p. 123: Don Hibbinbotham: "This would not be the last time that American diplomats would equate the interests of their country with those of the world."
p. 128: "La Fayette [sic] was in bad odour with the French court, and the over-promotion of a notorious dilettante merely deepened the contempt in which career French officers were already inclined to hold their rustic allies."
p. 128: "It is far more likely they were disenchanted by the partiality shown by Washington to what Lee sourly called his 'earwigs', the handsome and ambitious young men of his personal entourage."
p. 132: "If there is anything praiseworthy in the Angl0-American treatment of the indigenous peoples of North America, I regret it has escaped by notice. It was genocidal from the beginning...."
p. 153: "The broad conclusion to be drawn from the northern and northwestern fronts during the latter part of the war is that the Americans squandered the moral effect of the victory at Saratoga, and were hopelessly unprepared for the qualitative change in warfare that came about once the British abandoned their illusions about reconciliation.... The manner in which Americans were now voting with their purses and their feet shows that few believed in them anymore."
p. 158: "The successful defence of this fort has a good claim to being the most important American victory of the war."
p. 186: Hamilton on Gates: "One hundred and eighty miles in three days and a half. It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life. But it disgraces the general and the soldier."
p. 190: Cornwallis: "Legion, remember you have everything to lose, but nothing to gain."
p. 195: King's Mountain: "In a toe-to-toe contest between equal forces the Americans had been overwhelmingly victorious, largely offsetting the moral effect of Camden."
p. 205: Roderick Mackenzie of the 71st: "I leave to Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton all the satisfaction which he can enjoy from relating that he led a number of brave men to destruction, and then used every effort in his power to damn their fame with posterity."
p. 223: Eutaw Springs: "Barring those involving Indians it was the most ferocious battle of the war."
p. 227: "In September the Scots slaver and pirate John Paul alias Jones .... Not many other career criminals have been similarly honoured."
p. 236: "As a man clinging to a post for which he was unfitted Clinton possibly merited the contempt in which he was held by Germain, his naval colleagues and his subordinates, but they all merit like condemnation for withholding the formal loyalty due his rank, if not his person."
p. 243: "The battle [of Cape Henry] that followed was the only major French victory at sea since Beachy Head (Beveziers) in 1690."
p. 247: "There is food for thought here--Germans fighting for both the French and the British, Irishmen serving in all three armies, almost as many white Americans in the British as there were in a Continental Army in which, of three divisional commanders, one was a French nobleman and another a Prussian mercenary, and which was becoming increasingly dependent on slaves volunteered by their owners to take their place, or by African American paid substitutes."
p. 251: "However, one calculates who won, there is no disagreement that the Indians were the greatest losers."
p. 256-7: "Jefferson commented in a letter to a friend he naively thought would remain confidential, 'men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot of England.' After this was made public, Washington never spoke or wrote to him again."

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad effort but you have to get past the author’s agenda. He is determined to blast what he deems to be the myth of a heroic struggle for liberty from oppression. He sees a greyer picture of civil war & American hypocrisy aided by a France pursuing its own imperial interests (& bankruptcy as a result). The maps (admittedly on a tablet) are too small to get a clear feel of the manoeuvres if you are unfamiliar already. A good primer but that’s all.

[Pearson Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Title: Rebels and Redcoats
Author: Hugh Bicheno
Genre: Nonfiction, History
Length: 310 pages
Reviewer: Pearson Moore
Rating: 4 stars

Summary

Hugh Bicheno provides a general-audience British interpretation of the American Revolutionary War.


Review

Rebels and Redcoats is a competent but opinionated look at the American Revolutionary War from a British point of view. A few reviewers have taken issue with Mr. Bicheno's pointed assessment of major players on both sides, but I found nothing new or unexpected in these remarks. Other reviewers have noted a lack of source support for the author's interpretations and conclusions, and in this respect I agree with critics. Nevertheless, for its intended general audience of non-specialists, I believe this volume should be counted a valuable contribution to public awareness of a more balanced understanding of the war.

Although I enjoyed the work both as history and as entertainment (it is very well written), I tend to expect more from even a mass market publication. The book is certainly head and shoulders more interesting and useful than the entertaining Richard Holmes BBC series for which it is the companion book. Those interested in learning about the war should skip the television series and read the book. But the text has three important shortcomings that prevented me from awarding five stars.

First, the author asserts as thesis the notion that the American Revolution was not much more than an 18th century reincarnation of the 17th century English Civil War and that the American Civil War of 1861-1865 can be understood as the final step in a 200-year evolution of English libertarian thought. It's a fine thesis, and worthy of exploration, but I found the thesis unsupported and entirely undeveloped. That was disappointing.

Second, neither footnotes nor endnotes were provided. While I do not require this of mass market works, providing citations would have helped me a lot in my own work.

Finally, while I found myself agreeing with most of the author's assessments, especially of the American figures in the war, the lack of even in-text support for his judgments was disappointing. I may be too fussy in this regard, but good historians, I feel, support their statements, even if, as in this case, the assessments can be understood as common currency in Great Britain and Canada.

Overall

All in all this work constitutes a fine treatment of the American Revolutionary War suitable for general, non-specialist readers. I particularly recommend this book to U.S. readers not afraid to have some of their ideas about the "Foundation Myth" challenged by a very capable and often persuasive interpreter of American history.

Rating: 4 stars

[Steve Switzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Account of the Awi as almost a civil war
Nice tactical detail on the battles and very easy to read
Base for Richard holmes tv series on the awi

[Geoff Boxell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is an American born of British parents and he endeavours, in my mind, to give a balanced broad brush overview of what was in reality an Anglo-American civil war, This book was written, in part, to counter the irrational and unbalanced propaganda of the film, Patriot (for a British critique of the film see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBuvm...).
There is more to the causes of the war than the American Foundation Myth would have you believe, and many of them dishonourable.
Two other books that deal with the matter are "A Few Bloody Noses" and "Liberty's Exiles".
All three are worth reading.
I note that those reviews following that are American in origin tend to be unsympathetic. Maybe too many home truths are told in the book.

[Daniel Villines · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author constructs this book around the premise that the success of the revolution was secured by the luck of the Americans and a lack of commitment to total victory by the British. His premise makes for a refreshing new approach to the conflict. However, the author supports his premise with so many opinionated statements (preceded by the words "may have" and "could have") placed next to unfootnoted factual statements, that this book presents more of a philosophy than a theory.

[Robin Braysher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to have read an account of this war by the late, great Richard Holmes's - although I'm ashamed to say I can't recall his TV series on it - but, as he says this is the book he wishes he had written on it, which is recommendation enough for me (pxxi). I have 'flirted' with the American Revolutionary War over the decades but this is the first, full account of the war I have ever read. At just 260 pages it is a concise account, but full of detail and with the maps I prize so much; in addition there are some useful appendices of people and regiments (British, Loyalist and rebel).

There is no doubt that Bicheno is a man of strong opinions so be prepared to have any preconceptions shattered, but he sets his stall out early so this shouldn't come as a surprise: "Like an enterprising dog the diligent historian cannot refrain from bringing things to the attention of the public that many would have preferred left buried, nor from showing a routine irreverence even for monumental lamp posts." (pxxvi). He certainly takes a hatchet to many of the USA's founding myths and rubs the shine off its founding fathers, which is all to the good. Lest you think I'm biased, I have no doubt that British national myths need toppling too but, unfortunately, too many mendacious politicians, sections of the media and others simply cannot manage without them! This particular line struck me given recent controversies in the UK over history: "Possibly one should never think of the human cost of stately homes, but it is impossible not to do so when viewing the Georgian mansions of old Charleston." (p159). There's no doubt that he has a good - and frequently amusing - turn of phrase.

The US's founding fathers do not come out of the book especially well, but then neither do the British generals and politicians, so I found it a balanced account, well-peppered with contemporary accounts and with some interesting links made to later US history. Certainly when it comes to the atrocities he doesn't spare either side giving 'credit' where credit is due - and no, Mr Gibson, British troops never committed a Nazi-style burning of a church packed with civilians! I found it quite a sad read, not that any wars are cheery, but there is something especially tragic about civil wars - which is what this was - and came away with a sense of sadness for the poor fellows on both sides who had to do the fighting, the civilians who had their houses and crops raided by both sides, the blacks who were at the bottom of everybody's heap (in spite of their contribution) and the Native Americans who lost so much.

If you only read one book on the American Revolutionary War, then I think this should be it.

[GrandmaBee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Brit's perspective on the American Revolution.

[Lloyd · Rating 2 out of 5]

And so, I set out to learn more about the towns and historic places that I went to on vacation recently. This was probably not the best book to start with.

I wanted, I guess, pretty much a text book explanation of The Revolutionary War. What I got out of this book was too little about the causes and politics of the time and more of a rundown of the actual battles. I guess that wouldn't be too bad if knew more about the war itself but at this stage of my endeavors to learn more, this just wasn't the book for me.

I DID enjoy the non-biased view of some historical figures and events. According to this text, some of the people you thought were real stand-up guys in history may have turned out to be thieves, cut-throats, murderers or worse.

And the descriptions of the battles were very specific (although sometimes ad nauseum).

Maybe I'll come back to this one when I'm a bit more learned on the subject and enjoy it more. But, for now, I'm still looking for my book to glean my primary knowledge on The Revolutionary War.

[Claire]

This is a good basic general account of the American Revolutionary War, which pitted the Americans against their British imperial masters in the late 18th century and eventually resulted in American independence. Bicheno clearly details the complex and interlinked world of the various armies and militias of both sides and describes (with copious maps) the famous battles that have, over the centuries, been mythologised into something they probably weren't - he is unafraid to point the finger at both sides as being as bad as each other, or to reassess the traditional heroes and villians of the period. As a whole, Bicheno approaches this important aspect of American history with a clear mind and a genuine interest, assessing the war within its contexts of both American and British politics (and greed), and taking a fresh look at a perennially fascinating historical topic.

[Dex · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd history in that it does presume the reader already has some familiarity with the period and setting (the book was written to accompany a TV series I have not seen). This portrasy the birth of a Nation closer to a real birth with all the blood, screams and excretia most histories gloss over. Worth a read if just to remember that US independence was due to very unenlightened self-interest by a select group of Masonic slave owners, keen to protect their own propertied interests and to the significant financial and materiel support of some 'cheese eating surrender monkeys!' Liberty and Freedom - but only for a small rich and propertied elite.

[Sean Chick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like this book, although Bicheno has an axe to grind and a clear bias. That being said even if he fails to see the deep ideological debate going on but he does succeed at pointing out the unromantic aspects of the Revolution, including American corruption, atrocities, and incompetence. The main trouble is that as provocation as the questions are he fails to be consistent and often contradicts himself. As it book comes off as a well written rant. So if you have background on the war read this for the questions it raises. Otherwise try another book.

[Vandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

PBS DVD available..