Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/255

 neo-i] Capture of Charleston. War in the Carolinas. 223 parties against the American communications, to cut off any troops that were coming to their assistance, and thus to advance his siege-works on the neck unmolested. Defence was clearly impossible; and on May 12, 1780, the garrison, numbering 5000 soldiers and 1000 seamen, with 400 guns, surrendered. The British loss was estimated at about 250 killed and wounded. The capture of Charleston changed at once the scene and the character of the war. The two remaining campaigns were mostly fought out on the soil of the Carolinas. The nature of the country, woody, swampy, and even at the present day insufficiently provided with roads for heavy traffic, made it scarcely possible to move large forces. Conse- quently the war was more and more fought out by small bodies of men lightly equipped; and knowledge of the country and rapidity of movement became of primary importance. Moreover, the British com- manders were able in the south to do what elsewhere had been, save in very small measure, impracticable, namely, to draw on the popula- tion for reinforcements. There was, it is true, no widespread loyalist feeling. Over and over again British generals found that the promise of local support was a reed which pierced their hands when they leaned on it, and that pardoned rebels relapsed wholesale the moment that British protection or control was withdrawn and pressure was applied from the other side. Still the loyalists were strong enough to give to the struggle something of the character of a civil war. This, coupled with the difficulty of enforcing discipline among small parties scattered over a wide country, induced in the southern campaigns a ferocity unknown in other quarters. It is scarcely possible to apportion the blame judicially, quite impossible to acquit either party altogether. On both sides there was a tendency to claim the rights of belligerents, while meting out to enemies the treatment of rebels. Much too was done by irresponsible persons for which neither party can fairly be blamed. War was made the pretext for acts of rapine and brutality. It is not however to be thought that this guerilla warfare was the sole or even the chief part of the war in the south. On the contrary, the campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Carolinas are from a military point of view the most interesting of the whole war. Hitherto we have seen on one side inert and half-hearted generals, on the other an ill-provided and imperfectly disciplined army with which a commander could only venture on defensive or partial movements, never attempting any comprehensive policy of attack. Now for the first time we find face to face two well-seasoned armies, each under a daring and skilful leader. On the British side Cornwallis had already shown that he had fully grasped the truth, so imperfectly understood by his colleagues, that, if the rebellion was to be crushed, it must be crushed by a resolute, persistent, and quickly moving policy of attack. His opponent, Nathanael Greene, was beyond doubt the best commander, except CH. VII.