Guerrilla Warfare in the American Revolution

The American Revolutionary War, also called the American War of Independence, lasted from 1775 to 1783. The thirteen British colonies in North America fought for their independence from Great Britain. The war ended the American political revolution in which the colonists defeated the British rule. During the war, the British were almost sure of their victory due to the naval superiority that enabled them to capture and concur with the colonists. The Americans nonetheless developed a new fighting tactic to get the better of the British army and exploit their weakness. The American people created a new tactic called guerilla warfare. This is a kind of war tactic that does not involve head-on-head warfare. Instead, it entails rapidly assailing the enemy and runoff (Tse-Tung & Griffith, 2005). The Americans often used smaller groups of militias to attack, with fast surprise, against the colonists, pushing them into the territories of the Natives, where the natives had a greater advantage. Knowing the terrain is among the basic rules of guerilla warfare.

There were various guerrilla warfare methods and schemes over the period of the radical war. Among the schemes was holding dual lines of workforce fire and running off. The British army was to run after them, hoping to catch them, and the soldiers would eventually fall into a trap set up for them by the Americans. This scheme was successfully used in the Battle at Guilford Court and the Battle of Cowpens. The fight at Cowpens took topographic point on 17th of January although it was planned for 21st January 1781 and the one day of existent rivalry on 17th January. This was a key fight in the Revolutionary War for winning every step, much as ethical reasons. Before the conflict, General Green divided his ground soldiers of around 1,800 into two groups. His group would comprise 1,200 and another group of 600 soldiers under the command of General Morgan (Golway, 2005). This move was considered insignificant by General Cornwallis, who sent Banastre Tarleton, an awful British officer, along with 1,100 soldiers. General Morgan was sure to lose to Tarleton, so he went to Cowpens, South Carolina, to await the forthcoming attack. At Cowpens, Morgan added his troop to match Trarleton’s troop. While Morgan was aware that Tarleton was going to attack from the front, he laid a plan that was capable of managing it. Since it was obvious for his reserves to withdraw at the first mark of charge, Morgan planned a tactic that would put it in history. He ensured that his reserves withdrew in double lines. All the reserves in the lines were ordered to attack two times and go forth. The aim of this scheme was to enable Morgan to hold on until the end of the planned time. The scheme was eventually successful since his two-row reserves hit back and totally devastated the primary British charge and then retreated. The rest of his workforce brought down the British, and Tarleton barely escaped with 150 equestrians.

At the Battle of Guilford Court, a similar scheme was used. British General Cornwallis sought to avenge General Morgan for the humiliation he caused the British soldiers at Cowpens. In this pursuit, Cornwallis mandated his ground forces of about 2,500 soldiers to track General Morgan's ground forces, who decided to join General Green’s forces towards the north after the victory (Golway, 2005). Cornwallis followed the two groups of ground forces for almost two months and lost about 500 soldiers in the process. He later chooses to move in a cyclic manner, returning to Hillsborough. Not known to him General Green was waiting for him there. He had used their previous scheme at Cowpens in this fight. General Green had around 2,200 soldiers after the Cowpens conflict and had raised the workforce to about 4,000 soldiers (Golway, 2005). He used many reserve soldiers in double rows, and a third row of the continental portion comprised his ground forces. Colonel Washington was entitled to protecting the left wing and the Light Horse, while Harry Lee was responsible for the right wing. After the fast ambush, Green decided to move forward and not prosecute a conflict. He was aware that the loss they would have suffered would not hold a good battle, although they executed over 280 British soldiers during this fight. The battle at Guilford Court made Cornwallis pull back to Wilmington, where more British soldiers died.

Additionally, the Americans picked their battlefields carefully and clipped ambush every step as much as they could in guerrilla warfare to increase their chances of winning against their British rulers. Considering the conflicts were being held on the American land, the soldiers would make every use of the terrain and landscape to their benefit, more like the way the Natives utilized the land to their advantage while fighting the Colonists during the Indian-French war (Joes 2005). The Americans used the clip of a single day and selection of terrain to concur with the British in battles like Stony Point, Trenton and Paulus Hook.

The Battle of Trenton was among the greatest win using the scheme of guerrilla warfare. The conflict of Trenton took place on 26th December 1776 in Trenton, New Jersey. General George Washington planned to ambush the Hessians surprisingly. The Hessians comprised about 30,000 soldiers from Germany who were hired by Great Britain to aid in the success of the war, and almost 1,400 of them were in Trenton (Joes, 2015). General Washington travelled with his soldiers past the Delaware River at midnight aiming at striking the Hessians while they were all asleep. General Washington had 2,400 soldiers under his command and 18 guns, with infantry groups under Major General Sullivan and General Green's command and weaponry under Brigadier General Henry Knox (Golway, 2005). They launched three attacks from different sides as led by the different commanders. The Hessians were rendered incapable of launching any meaningful counter-attack and eventually escaped to an orchard nearby with over a hundred casualties.

The conflict at Stony Point transpired on July 15th at night and culminated the forenoon of 16th July. General Washington allocated this attack to Major Antony Wayne. Under his command, Wayne had 1400 soldiers allocated to him for the attack. He arranged the soldiers in two rows and moved towards the garrison and masked behind the dark night. The first group to attack the garrison used their bayonets (Lynn, 2019). The targeted British garrison was sent into mayhem and surrendered really first. In general, 145 Americans lost their lives in this battle but killed 65 British soldiers and took over the garrison from the British General Clinton. A similar conflict was fought at Paulus Hook, New Jersey. Harry Lee led a small group of soldiers to attack a 200 workforce of British soldiers. The attack was in the morning, and almost all British soldiers were killed or caught at the garrison. He returned with everybody within two hours of the attack to ensure there was no support from the British army.

In conclusion, in almost all main military operations, weapons, troops and terrain often determine how the war is fought. A major example of this martial policy is the American Revolutionary War. It has been presumed that Americans exclusively used guerrilla warfare to win the war against the British. Nonetheless, they used several other tactics on and off the war zones that resulted in the final surrender of the British. While guerrilla warfare was an instrumental aspect of the Patriots’ military scheme against the British, the Americans won the war by incorporating guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare and linear battle schemes. There is, however, no doubt that guerrilla warfare had a key role in the victory of Americans against the British in the war. This tactic put the name and fear of the militia name in the minds of the British and obtained respect across the world. The American army was considered the free army and the most brutal soldiers in the world.

References

Golway, T. (2005). Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution. Macmillan.

Joes, A. J. (2015). America and guerrilla warfare. University Press of Kentucky.

Lynn, J. A. (2019). The Bayonets of the Republic: motivation and tactics in the army of Revolutionary France, 1791-94. Routledge.

Tse-Tung, M., & Griffith, S. B. (2005). On guerrilla warfare. Courier Corporation.