Ebook: Fusiliers: The Saga of a British Redcoat Regiment in the American Revolution

From Lexington Green in 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, one British regiment marched thousands of miles and fought a dozen battles to uphold British rule in America: the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Their story, and that of all the soldiers England sent across the Atlantic, is one of the few untold sagas of the American Revolution, and it sheds a new light on the war itself, while offering surprising, at times unsettling, insights into the way the war was conducted on both sides. Drawing on a wealth of previously unused primary accounts, and with compelling narrative flair, Mark Urban reveals the inner life of the 23 rd Regiment, the Fusiliers—and through it, of the British army as a whole—as it fought one of the pivotal campaigns of world history. Describing how British troops adopted new tactics and promoted new leaders, Urban illuminates the battlegrounds of the Revolution, and shows how their experience in America laid the foundations for the redcoats’ heroic performance against Napoleon some thirty years later. Fighting the climactic battles of the Revolution in the American south, the Fusiliers became one of the crack regiments of the British army, never believing themselves to have been defeated. But the letters from members of the 23rd, and other archival accounts, reveal much more than battle details. Living the Revolution day-to-day, the Fusiliers witnessed acts of kindness and atrocity on both sides that have gone unrecorded in other histories of the war. Their observations bring the conflict down to human scale and provide a unique insight into soldiering in the late eighteenth century. Fusiliers will challenge the prevailing stereotypes of the enemy redcoats and offer an invaluable new perspective on a defining period in American history.