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Download Thesis This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Military Honour, the British Army and American Indians in the Sixty Years' War Linzy, T J Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 Linzy | 1 Military Honour, the British Army and American Indians in the Sixty Years' War By T.J Linzy Student Number 0844647 Ph.D. Thesis War Studies Department King’s College London Supervisor Dr. Alan James 6 August 2013 Word Count: 96,321 without Bibliography Bibliography: 6,247 Linzy | 2 Abstract Prior to 1755, British-American colonial forces and American Indians (hereinafter Indians) predominantly conducted the military campaigns in the North American theatre of European conflicts. From 1755 to 1815, however, the British Army itself became heavily engaged and had to consider its use of Indians as allies or auxiliaries. Indian War customs, such as torture, mutilation and killing of prisoners and civilians, were at odds with an emerging, although uneven, consensus against these practices in Europe. Therefore, British officials often had to decide if the use of Indians was compatible with their concept of military honour. The purpose of this inquiry is to determine whether the British concept of military honour hindered the effective use of Indians in the era of the Sixty Years' War (l755-1815). The author will attempt to persuade the reader that it did and it ultimately cost the British Empire its direct control of, then even its influence in, the American midwest. Linzy | 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Prologue.................................................................................................................. 4 1.2 Purpose.................................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Preface .................................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Scope....................................................................................................................... 6 1.5 Out of Scope ........................................................................................................... 9 1.6 Definitions ............................................................................................................ 10 1.7 Historiographical Context..................................................................................... 12 1.7.1 The Geo-Political Environment from 1755 to 1815 in North America and Europe ................................................................................................................................ 14 1.7.2 The Martial Culture of Indians and North American Methods of Warfare ... 30 1.7.3 The British Army and Eighteenth-Century British Society........................... 36 1.8 Introduction Summary .......................................................................................... 45 2. Honour, Society and the British View of the Indians ................................................. 46 3. The British Army’s Introduction to Frontier Warfare ................................................ 69 4. Rangers and Indians.................................................................................................... 87 5. The Undefeated......................................................................................................... 107 6. Indians in a Civil War............................................................................................... 128 7. Capitulation............................................................................................................... 162 8. Final Stand ................................................................................................................ 187 9. Analysis and Conclusion .......................................................................................... 208 9.1 Analysis .............................................................................................................. 209 9.2 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 223 Linzy | 4 ‘Every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.’ - Carl von Clausewitz1 1. Introduction 1.1 Prologue In 1755, Major General Edward Braddock III, son of a British Army Major General, was killed in his attempt to take the Forks of the Ohio River from the French. In 1815, Major General Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington, was killed in his attempt to take New Orleans, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, from the Americans. These two battles formed the opening and closing chapters of the British Army’s major combat operations in North America. Both officers had their commissions purchased in youth by families with Royal connections. They had different levels of combat experience, but both had served in conventional and successful Army careers. Each officer had been sent to North America directly from Europe to take control of an unstable situation and deliver decisive victories. Both operations were in aid of decisively retaining Britain’s North American colonies’ geographic and commercial security as well. The forces both officers commanded were working against enemy forces that were, at least in conventional warfare terms, inferior to them. Both men had the confidence of the Monarchy and Parliament as well as the respect of the European military establishment. As was common in both eras, neither officer lacked loyalty to the King, nor courage. The risk to senior officer’s lives was real as shown by both of their deaths and the deaths of many of their direct subordinates on the battlefield. Critically, each Major General had Indian components available to them that were dismissed, either through choice or inept co- ordination. The similarities between these two officers are striking. In short, these two officers pose classic examinations for this paper. However, if every situation and every British Army officer in North America from 1755 to 1815 were as similar as these two at the beginning and the ending of the era, the answer to the question of the present paper would be very straightforward. However, this was no ordinary age and the similarities mask significant variations in British Army officer behaviour within the era. 1 Carl von Clausewitz, Edited and Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, On War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976), 593 Linzy | 5 1.2 Purpose This paper was inspired in part by an article entitled ‘Early American Ways of War: A New Reconnaissance, 1600-1815’. In it, Wayne E. Lee examined the cultural factors of warfare in the American colonies, then the United States, and how contradictory they could be depending on the situation, especially against or with Indians on the frontier. Lee explained that ideology has taken the fore with most early American history, but has its limitations and an examination of military culture might help explain events further. Lee suggested that honour could explain some of the contradictions.2 This author agrees and the purpose of this inquiry is to determine whether the British Army’s concept of military honour hindered its effective use of Indians as allies or auxiliaries. Specifically, this paper will examine the different behaviours and beliefs of the most prominent leaders of the British Army when confronted with the choice to use American Indians or not. The author will attempt to persuade the reader that military honour did hinder the effective use of Indian forces and ultimately cost the British Empire its direct control of and, eventually, its influence in the American midwest. 1.3 Preface Even after two centuries of European exploration and settlement, the bountiful area between the Appalachian mountain chain in the east and the Mississippi River in the west from the Great Lakes in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south (hereinafter the ‘midwest’) was still largely controlled by American Indians (hereinafter ‘Indians’) in 1754.3 However, the French and Indian War in North America, eventually part of the
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