Episode 225: Noble Volunteers, or, The British Soldier in the American Revolution

Sometimes Americans are pretty sure that they know a few things about the British soldiers who fought in the American Revolution. A list of them probably is something like this: They were the scum of the earth, scraped from the London gutter and the prisons to unwillingly serve in America They were stupid, so stupid that they obligingly wore red coats and stood in long lines, the easier to be shot by clever Americans who hid behind trees and rocks They had no idea how to fire their guns, and when they did they always missed They plundered and looted and deserted as often as they could, when they weren’t drunk As punishment they were flogged until they were dead. Just about every one of those concepts is wrong, as Don Hagist explains in his book Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution. He has written several previous books on the British Army of the American Revolution, as well as The Revolution's Last Men: The Soldiers Behind the Photographs. In addition to writing, and his day job, he is the editor of the Journal of the American Revolution. Don was previously on the podcast to talk about flogging and punishment, in a “Behind the Book” episode of the podcast (Behind the Book 6: The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves), when I sought to discover whether Daniel Morgan could have actually been given the punishment of five hundred lashes, and whether or not that should have been a death sentence.