Free The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire by III H. W. Crocker

its education—he was undaunted by hardship, unimpressed by threats, indifferent to danger, sure in command, practical in his assessments, and high-minded in his duty. He was, his father noted, a “very military” 2 young man; Cornwallis always thought of himself foremost as a soldier.
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    Did you know?
    Cornwallis supported the protests of the American colonists—until they turned to rebellion
    Cornwallis was an innovator in using elephants to transport artillery
    Cornwallis resigned as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when King George III refused to grant toleration to Catholics
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    Cornwallis’s military career began at seventeen, when he became an ensign in the fashionable 1st Grenadier Guards. Unlike many young officers, he took his military vocation seriously. He went to the continent to see action, and even finagled himself a staff appointment in Germany during the Seven Years’ War. In 1763 he took up his political duties in the House
of Lords, where he joined the Rockingham Whigs and established himself as a liberal in favor of conciliating rather than taxing the American colonies. In 1768, he married Jemima Tullekin Jones, the daughter of a regimental colonel. The couple was ardently devoted; it was alleged she died (in 1779) because his long absences fighting the American colonists broke her heart. Her death, Cornwallis wrote, “effectually destroyed all my hopes of happiness in this world. I will not dwell on this wretched subject, the thoughts of which harrow up my soul.” 3

The Reluctant General
    When he was sent to America to suppress the rebellion in 1776, he was promoted to lieutenant-general of Britain’s North American Army, which still left him third in command, subordinate to generals Sir Henry Clinton and Sir William Howe. All three generals had supported the colonists before the war, and it showed. Howe was pessimistic about Britain’s ability to suppress the rebellion, especially after the Battle of Bunker (or actually Breed’s) Hill where the Americans proved a stubborn foe. Howe fought with a caution born of half-heartedness and even let Washington’s army escape New York when he could possibly have crushed it. Cornwallis was cautious too, but the British succeeded in driving the Americans before them, even if the king’s forces suffered stinging rebukes at Trenton and Princeton.
    In October 1777, Howe resigned and Sir Henry Clinton was appointed his successor. Clinton preferred the safety of New York, its charming social life, and the comforting arms of his mistress to campaigning; and Cornwallis, though he remained a dutiful subordinate, tried to resign his commission. He yearned for home and believed the government was undercutting the army in North America in order to fight the French in the Caribbean. The king refused his resignation, but Cornwallis was finally granted leave and returned to England in December 1779 to find his wife, Lady Cornwallis,
desperately ill. He stayed with her through the winter until she died in February. It was her death that compelled Cornwallis to forgo thoughts of home and the company of his two young children and to return to the grim and unsatisfactory war in America; the reserved Englishman needed to bury his never-healing grief in duty.
    He found that duty in the southern United States where he rejoined Clinton and besieged Charleston—this time, unlike a previous attempt in 1776, successfully. With Charleston secured, Clinton returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis in command, granting him broad powers and instructions to work his way to the Chesapeake after bringing the Carolinas to heel. This Cornwallis swiftly set out to do, reestablishing a loyalist government in South Carolina and then moving to the back country to fight the rebels. He met them at Camden. The rebel commander was General Horatio Gates, a former British army major of common birth and conniving personality. He had served in America in the