Forgotten Warriors- Forgotten Battles: The Thirteen Revolutionary militias and their Indispensable Role

By Paul Hunt

Forgotten Warrior-Forgotten Battles is an analytical history of the Thirteen American militias during the Revolutionary War. It is the companion work to In Defense of Hearth and Home which covers the colonial militias from 1607-1774. The work argues that the contributions of the militias in the Revolution were partly a result of their varied colonial experiences and their combat experience during the Revolution itself. The work argues that militia performance during the war was not random but predictable when certain contributing factors were accounted for. Forgotten Warriors stresses that the high variability in militia quality was a function of their varied colonial combat inheritance combined with their varied Revolutionary combat history. Forgotten Warriors argues that the militias and the Continental Army created a symbiotic relationship on the battlefield that in turn created a unique Center of Gravity that the English were never able to discern or attack, thus resulting in their eventual defeat. Forgotten Warriors builds on and completes the themes developed in In Defense of Hearth and Home. The two works should be considered as linked and a full understanding of the colonial and revolutionary militias can only be obtained by reading both. Both works analyze combat by reducing engagements to a numerical database that can be analyzed for trends and patterns underlying the wars examined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098336615

Paul Hunt

Paul Hunt is president of Pricing Solutions, an international pricing consultancy. He has an MBA and has written numerous articles for magazines and associations on pricing. He has more than twenty years of experience in his field, lives in Toronto, and is a proud father to his daughter, Julia. Jim Saunders leads the Pricing Management Practice at Pricing Solutions. A professional engineer with an MBA, he has more than twenty-five years of management and pricing consulting experience and seeks to “make data fun” in his speeches, lectures, and writings.

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Title

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Foreword- By Dr. Robert Swierenga

Acknowledgments-

Introduction-

Chapter 1- The Colonial Militia’s Germanic Origins and Development from 1607 to 1774

Chapter 2- The Militias on the Eve of the Revolution, the English Way of War, And the Importance of the Center of Gravity

Chapter 3- The Coastal War: The English Navy Attacks

Chapter 4- The Indian War- Success, Stalemate, and Failure on the Frontiers

Chapter 5- The Loyalist War: Strangling the Counterrevolution

Chapter 6- The Infantryman's War: Fire versus Steel

Chapter 7- The English War: Increasing Powers of Resistance

Chapter 8- Synergy: Militia-Continental Army Relationships

Chapter 9- The Search for the Colonial Center of Gravity

Conclusion

Appendix A- The Southern Wars

Appendix B- Colonial Population and Militia Numbers

Appendix C- Coastal War Dataset and Revolutionary War Methodology

Appendix D- The Indian War Dataset

Appendix E- The Loyalist War Dataset

Appendix F- The English War Dataset

Appendix G- Discussion of the French Arrie‘re Ban and French Military Diversions to the Coastline

Endnotes

Bibliography

Cover Art: The moment of transition from father, husband, and farmer to that of militiaman and soldier.

ISBN: 978-1-09-833661-5

Foreword

General George Washington is often depicted as the American Cincinnatus, the fabled Roman citizen soldier who left the plow to defend his country. Washington left his plantation at the call of the Continental Congress in 1775 to lead the Continental Army to victory. He left his farm a second time in 1789 to serve as president, but refused a third time in 1800 to leave his beloved Mt. Vernon home for a third term. He was the ultimate citizen soldier.

Long before Washington answered the call, every colonial militiaman was an American Cincinnatus. For more than a hundred years, these amateur warriors left their plows in the field on a moment’s notice and took up their muskets to defend their families against all enemies—Indians, the French, and ultimately, the English. Without the militiamen, the Colonial Army would have been crippled and the cause of liberty doomed.

With this book, the American citizen soldiers of the colonial era have finally receive their due from an historian who has followed virtually every militia encounter in all thirteen colonies. The military engagements of each in the Revolution is set in the context of its prior history and development, notably during the French and Indian War.

Paul Hunt in Forgotten Warriors—Forgotten Battles argues for the indispensable role of the militias during the Revolutionary War, 1774-1783. The militias defended Atlantic coastal regions against English naval incursions; they protected the hinterlands against Indian allies of the English, notably the Iroquois; and they neutralized Loyalists bands who often joined English regulars or engaged in guerilla warfare against the rebels. Most important, the colonial militias fought alongside General Washington’s Continental Army whenever he faced superior English armies. After carefully charting every militia skirmish and battle, Hunt concludes that militias and Continentals together won the Revolutionary War. Neither could have defeated the professional soldiers of King George III without the other. They were indispensable partners. Without both performing their roles, the English would have exploited the weaknesses of each to break down their defenses. The militiamen’s finest hour was to play midwife to the birth to a nation.

Paul Hunt is the ideal person to write the first comprehensive history of the colonial militia in the Revolutionary War. His military service and graduate training as an historian provide the essential background to write military history. His analysis of militia battles is insightful and perceptive. Only someone with a military background can analyze the strategy and decisions of commanding officers in the various campaigns and battles. Hunt is able to make the battles come alive in terms of the actual fighting, and he is able to assess the wisdom or lack thereof of the various commanders. His is the perfect marriage of experience and formal education.

Given the current public attention to the Second Amendment regarding a well-regulated militia and the right to bear arms, Hunt's book will be timely indeed. Recent TV series on the Revolution also mention the militia but none show its central role in winning Independence.

Robert P. Swierenga, Professor of History Emeritus, Kent State University, and Albertus C. Van Raalte Research Professor in the A. C. Van Raalte Institute, Hope College.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to thank two people who in equal measure contributed to the writing of this book. Thank you my dear wife Suni who has put up with so much in my obsession to finish this. You have put up with many long nights on the computer and trips to libraries and battlefields hundreds of miles away without complaint. It was your love and support that enabled me to finish this.

Thank you Dr. Robert Swierenga. You have been my mentor and encourager both in the 1990s and recently. You showed me the power and potential of a quantitative look at history. I asked for your opinion and you went far beyond by proof reading and editing the entire work. I only hope this work meets with your approval. Without you two I could not have written this book, thank you both.

Thanks also to Tony Zoskey and Allison Kelly who proof read for content many of the chapters of this work. Your suggestions and comments were very helpful and much appreciated.

I would like to thank the personnel of the College of William and Mary Library for their help in my research efforts. I especially would like to thank the people who man the front desk for consistently allowing me to take out more titles than I was allowed. By looking the other way while I borrowed many more titles than I was supposed to you measurably shortened the time it took me to write this book. Many thanks.

Note to the Reader

Forgotten Warriors Forgotten Battles examines the American struggle for independence, focusing of the contributions of the thirteen state militias. In Defense of Hearth and Home is a companion work looking at the story of the thirteen colonial militias from their inception up to 1775 and the eve of the Revolution. If you enjoyed Forgotten Warriors Forgotten Battles then I heartily recommend you continue with In Defense of Hearth and Home. If you do then I promise you will never think of the militias in quite the same way again. Throughout the colonial period the militias defended their parent colonies, and quite successfully too. It was the militias’ efforts and struggles in this period that laid the foundation for our independence. Indeed, your ideas of how we settled and defended our colonies will be greatly changed, permanently. Periodically in In Defense of Hearth and Home I use the same quantitative analysis to examine how the colonial militias fought. I think you will find the answers surprising, and significantly change how we view the entire colonial period and the militias’ role in defense of their colonies. If you have already read In Defense of Hearth and Home you may pick up the story with Chapter 3, however I encourage you to reread or at least review Chapter 2 as well.

Introduction

Why write on the militias? They don’t exactly have the best reputation do they? The militias were the primary defense force for the American colonies for most of the period from 1607-1775, a period when those colonies experienced explosive growth and prosperity, all the while amidst a highly hostile environment. Yet these militias have such a poor reputation. Normally in such hostile conditions, a poorly defended society does not prosper. Yet clearly America prospered. But if the militias were so inadequate, how then did the English colonies thrive all the while surrounded by Dutch, Spanish, and French competitors and the indigenous tribes who opposed their every expansion? This incongruity cries out for examination, it cries out for revision.

By the only measure that matters, the militiaman was a tremendous success. The society he defended prospered and grew. No North American English colony was ever conquered.a Some came to within the knife's edge of defeat, but every time militiamen rose to the challenge. Every time his colony was threatened, the militiaman interposed himself between a merciless enemy and his family, his village, and all he held dear. He often willingly sacrificed himself to ensure their survival. Along the way, he developed the curious knack of being just good enough, however high or low the bar was set. The emergency over, he quietly returned to plow, sickle, or hammer. The militiaman was, in the truest sense, an amateur soldier. He was only a soldier as long as needed; when his soldierly skills were no longer wanted he was a farmer, tanner, blacksmith, fisherman, preacher, or any one of the many vocations in colonial America.

But, scholars, historians, and military figures have spent the past one and fifty hundred years disparaging the militiaman, since at least immediate aftermath of the Civil War. General Emory Upton, a strong advocate of a professional army, wrote a scathing indictment of the militia in The Military Policy of the United States published in 1904. "We will first indicate to the reader the chief causes of weakness of our present system, and next will outline the system which ought to replace it.

The causes of the weakness are as follows:

First. The employment of militia and undisciplined troops commanded by generals and officers utterly ignorant of the military art."¹

Historians quickly picked up where he left off. In one such example, Professor Higginbotham, in a speech at the 6th Military History Symposium in 1976 questioned the very institutional existence of the militias, But when was the militia ever a viable institution? I do not think that you could have convinced Washington or Knox that it was ever viable during the Revolution. John Shy, while arguing in 1962 for a stronger role of the militias in the Revolution stated the then current scholarly assessment of the militias as a fairly static institution and one that was both militarily inefficient and relatively uncomplicated. Of late that view has seen some needed revision. Still, even today the militias are often described as static, incompetent, randomly good or bad, easily panicked, and unable to improve.²

Yes, it is true that the militias, being amateurs, had panics, made mistakes, and failed at times. But, quite unjustly, these failures have come to define them. Alongside each failure is a success, albeit much less remarked on or remembered. Beside each battlefield flight is a stalwart defense maintained to the last extremity or a successful militia attack pressed until the enemy’s defeat. Yet despite his successes the militiaman has been much maligned in history, from the day he lived, through the centuries and even to today. His prowess has been belittled, his accomplishments scorned, his soldierly skills scoffed at. Only his enemies grew to respect him, and they only after they had fought him. This simple truth has been much neglected in colonial histories. The list of enemies laid low by unskilled, lowborn, rabble militiamen is long indeed. Powhatan warriors tried and failed, and so did New England’s Algonquin tribes. The French, Dutch, and Spanish all crossed swords with the militiaman and yet failed to conquer. So too did the Iroquois, Creek and Cherokee, the Abenaki, the Ohio Indians, the Delaware, and numerous pirates all come against our lowly militiaman and they all failed. Still has history judged him oh so harshly. Why?

Often it was men with an agenda. The gentry and monarchs did not want to promote the idea that free men, peasants, could succeed without them. So too they scarcely understood the Indian warriors’ capabilities until an arrogant General Braddock marched a thousand doomed regulars into the wilderness. Yet even then they did not believe the militiaman possessed soldierly qualities. After Concord, Generals Gage and Sir Percy were surprised at their steadfast enemy. A brave, resolute militiaman was outside of all their familiar paradigms. As did their monarchs, the professional soldiers scorned him, disparaging his ability, the difficulties he faced, and most of all his accomplishments. This view was seconded by Continental officers during and after the Revolution. Daniel Morgan, wrote that he had 800 men at Cowpens, the number of his Continentals, but he forgot to mention the hundreds of militiamen who fought in the battle. After the Revolution, General Knox downplayed militia numbers and their role. So did Hamilton whose Federalist ideas were more congruent with a large professional army.

Which of these two views is accurate? Were the successful colonial defenders for 180 years truly incompetent, static, unable to change, and of little real ability in battle? If so why did they have such an unbroken record of success? Why did their society flourish behind such a poor bulwark in such hostile conditions? You will be surprised at the answers, and you will be further surprised at exactly who the Revolutionary militiaman was and how much he sacrificed and accomplished, how rich was the heritage he bequeathed to us.

The history of the Continental Army in the American Revolution is both well understood and extensively chronicled. The role of the militias however is somewhat less well understood. While the militias are included in every history of the Revolution, only rarely have they been looked at critically. Their contributions are the subject of considerable debate, and opinions vary greatly about their relative worth to the American war effort. In the American Revolution, the militias had a mix of both good and bad battlefield performances. At times they were very good, as at Concord, King’s Mountain, and Bennington where militia armies defeated European regulars with little or no aid from Continentals. At other times they fled with barely a shot fired as at Kip’s Bay, the Pennsylvanians at Princeton, and the North Carolinians at Briar Creek. In the American Revolution, their performances are often considered randomly poor or randomly good. But are they random? This work looks at the Revolution and focuses on the militias, when they performed poorly, when they performed well, and most importantly why. This work will explain why their failures occurred and will show that their failures have a pattern, and in fact reflect a stage in their development to adapt to and repel the English invasion.

To understand how good or bad the militias were and why, we must look at their wars. Wars are complex creatures. They can be studied on many levels and often have been. One level concerns the interaction of the opposing generals’ decisions, Rommel and Patton, Grant and Lee, Washington and Howe. Another method involves the clash of armies, a chronological recounting of combat as each army seeks to dominate and crush the other. Ever read Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe or Von Manstein's Lost Victories? Another way to study a conflict is from the soldiers’ eyes. Anderson’s A People’s Army or Forrest’s Soldiers of the French Revolution are great examples of this. Each level of historical study uncovers valid truth about the conflicts studied, but often not the same truths. Frequently, a truth is unclear at one level but quite prominent at another. Skilled authors have penned multi-level studies. For example, Scheer and Rankin’s Rebels and Redcoats manages a fine synthesis of the personal level and the clash of armies. From this one book you can learn a lot about our Revolution and the men who fought it.

One of the finest multilevel studies is David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon. Chandler examines the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Imperial Wars on several different levels. One of them is the institutional level. He sees the Napoleonic Wars as a clash between a newly reorganized French Army and Napoleonic tactical system arrayed against other European powers using military institutions and war fighting methods developed 40 years previously. Chandler’s thesis is that an improved and modernized French military institution translated into higher French Army combat effectiveness. It is this level or perspective that this work looks at, a level of study that is somewhat under-examined. It is also a level at which certain truths are apparent that are not readily discernable at other levels.

To the fighting men, a war is literally a matter of life and death. Men in combat therefore operate at their height of innovative and adaptive ability. For example, in World War II what Americans did with the tank was astounding. Tanks that float; sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? Yet tanks swam ashore at Normandy, fighting until they were burned out hulks.a Though many sank in the high surf, especially at Omaha Beach, the creativity underpinning the concept was remarkable.

In Europe and the Pacific, dozens of variations emerged to solve individual problems. There were tanks that swam, tanks that swept mines, flamethrower tanks, tanks that tunneled through hedgerows, tank bulldozers, tank bridges, etc., literally dozens of varieties. Some were developed within only days or weeks of the need arising. This was innovative adaptation at its fastest and finest. But this was adaptation at the micro level. There is also adaptation at the institutional level. The French Napoleonic Army of 1805 was a vastly different institution from the Ancien Regime Army of 1789, just sixteen years prior. But here the changes were organizational. All major changes separating the Ancien Regime Army from the army Napoleon used to crush all Europe were organizational or tactical (true, the artillery equipment was better). So too the German Army of 1940 was a completely different (and far more robust) creature than that of 1918, much to the chagrin of the French. It is these kinds of adaptations that this work focuses on.

Also, battle is not a static but a dynamic interaction. Clausewitz touched on this at several points in his work On War: two Armies, being two incompatible elements, should destroy one another unremittingly, just as fire and water can never put themselves in equilibrium, but act and react upon on another, until one quite disappears….When this movement has exhausted itself… then a new movement, in most cases in the opposite direction… Samuel Griffith introducing Sun Tzu’ The Art of War also addresses this: One of the most difficult problems which confronts any commander who has committed his forces in accordance with a well-developed plan is to alter this in light of changing circumstances. Sun Tzu recognized the inherent difficulties, both intellectual and physical, and repeatedly emphasized that the nature of war is ceaseless change. The United States Army has a well-worn phrase that emphasizes this point, No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. Warfare is a constant cycle of adaptation at all levels.³

Every war is a clash between two or more military institutions. Each is a complex product of its constituent peoples’ culture and government, its interaction and experience against opponents, and its parent civilization’s technological inheritance. These factors convey different strengths and weaknesses to the nation’s army. In wars between culturally similar nations, this institutional gulf is usually small. In clashes between civilizations, this gulf is often quite large. In such cases, their large dissimilarity prevents both armies from being fully effective against each other. Successes mix with failures, sometimes large failures. These failures stimulate adaptation as each army tries to gain an advantage and grapple more effectively with its foe. The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel’s thesis, antithesis, new synthesis accurately describes how these attempts to cope mutate into complex cycles of interactive adaptation. These cycles are present in short wars. In long wars, they often determine the victor and the vanquished. Unfortunately, these adaptive cycles often go unrecognized and are studied coherently even less often.

This dynamic has been extensively remarked on. The interactive cycle of action, reaction, and synthesis operates at multiple levels, within a single battle, over a war, and over multiple cycles of war and peace. For example, in reaction to medieval cavalry dominance, infantry developed pikes and close order drill, a weapon and a tactical change. This stimulated the adoption of the Tercio with its musketeers to disrupt the pike masses, again a weapon and a tactical change. Cavalry then developed the pistol caracole. The Tudor Kings, recognizing that the cumulative effect of these changes doomed the medieval knight, redesigned the English Army from one centered on medieval knights to an early modern militia. A continuous cycle of interactive adaptation spanning generations. Hegel would have been proud. To understand militia development before and during the Revolution it is key to comprehend these interactive cycles of action, reaction, and synthesis.

The first settlers in North America were militiamen, with all the institutional heritage England’s long, celebrated military traditions could impart. They came to the New World with a specific way of waging war, and met a completely different way of waging war in that of the indigenous tribes. As these two very different militaries clashed the American and Indian ways of fighting interacted, changing over time. Soon the French and Spanish empires entered the contest for hegemony in North America. As the American, French, Spanish, and Indian militaries clashed, they interacted to form and shape the nature and capabilities of the colonial militias. The exigencies of combat against first the East Coast tribes and then their French and Spanish allies, slowly transformed the Plymouth and Jamestown Trainbands into the Revolutionary militias. Militia combat experience, or lack thereof, greatly influenced militia organizational adaptation and effectiveness over the colonial period. Thus, thirteen individual militia systems of varying quality entered the American Revolution, not a monolithic Militia of uniform sameness. When the American Revolution began, the English Army clashed with a very different group of militias than those transplanted to Jamestown and Plymouth.

In order to gain a firm understanding of each colonial militias' strengths, weaknesses, and development in combat, we briefly trace each individual colony's militia over the colonial period to the Revolution. This is not intended as a comprehensive institutional study.a We focus on each militias' combat experiences or their lack, taking note of the institutional changes they adopted during and after each conflict. We then proceed to an overall assessment of each militia on the eve of the American Revolution. We trace how each colony's militia was affected by the differing stresses of these conflicts. What was to one colony a life or death struggle, to another merited barely a footnote. Only by tracing each colony's militia history as a continuous progression can we understand their differing military capabilities in 1775. Only by understanding this can we understand why each separate militia performed well or poorly during the Revolution.

The Revolution was a highly complex clash of six dissimilar protagonists, the militias, the Continental Army, the Indian tribes, the Loyalists, and the English Army and Navy. Historians often depict the militias as randomly unreliable and of little real worth. Much of the seeming randomness in militia combat effectiveness was not random when viewed through the lens of adaptive cycles. You must view the colonial militias as many separate, differentiated organizations each possessing different strengths, weaknesses and capabilities. An examination of militia combat effectiveness from these perspectives illuminates many of the reasons for their good and poor showings in the Revolution. To view the militias as a monolith is a serious error.

A brief comment about methods. In order to understand how a military institution evolves and adapts under the pressures of war, you need to ask certain questions. Specifically, exactly who fought who, how, and with what degree of success? Patterns will emerge. Then these patterns changed over time as the opponents’ changing patterns of attack and defense interacted in a complex mosaic. At the macroscopic scale only the most general trends can be discerned. Not so at the microscopic, where the answers are often readily apparent. This work uses a quantitative method to bring out these patterns and cycles of adaptation. Periodically primary source accounts of engagements are reduced to a database that is scrutinized for these patterns. This is primarily a study of how the opposing institutions interacted with and on one another. It is more than that though. At the microscopic level individual men made decisions that either resulted in their death or survival. This study examines how those individuals struggled and strove to survive in an environment brutally unforgiving of failure. In turn, their individual decisions collectively changed the nature of their parent militias over time. This work studies how individual men fight and adapt in order to survive. Most often they were sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. Occasionally, they were even generals.

Since so many have such a poor opinion of the militias, how do we change such entrenched opinions? A prose history might convince a few, but only a few. Two centuries of disparagement will not so easily be altered. But the militiaman’s sacrifices demand he be remembered accurately. No, to convince history of the need to view him more kindly, proofs are required. Numbers don't lie. While they can be manipulated, I assure you that in this work they have not been. To overturn entrenched ideas numbers equal proof. So, this work includes a number of tables and graphs. I apologize for using such tedium, but it serves a purpose. Through these tools it becomes abundantly clear how well or poor the Revolutionary militiaman did, why, and when. By the end of this work you will agree he is due far more respect than he has heretofore been accorded. You must pardon me if I commandeer a well-known phrase, but a single graph is worth a thousand pages of prose.

In spite of the graphs, and sometimes because of them, this work wades through a fair amount of history. In reading this work you will learn quite a bit about the Revolutionary militiaman and his world. By and large, the men and women who settled these lands were uncommonly brave. Some of the deeds women performed in these pages would put most of today’s men to shame. You cannot read these pages without coming away with an understanding of the hardships and trials they faced. This understanding comes as a consequence of the tremendous deeds they accomplished, the terrific trials they overcame in order to survive. We owe them far more than we realize, and they accomplished much more than we remember. My only desire is that when you finish reading this, you understand some of what they strove and fought for. I hope you will come to know them, with all their faults, as the noble men and women they were. Above all, this is the story of a free people, fighting first for survival, and later to maintain their freedom against tremendous odds.

A final note. Forgotten Warriors- Forgotten Battles has a companion work- In Defense of Hearth and Home. The work covers the colonial militias from 1607 to 1774, spending one, two, or even in one case three chapters on each militia system. In Defense of Hearth and Home lays out in detail the institutional foundations for each militia system’s relative quality at the beginning of the Revolution. Each colony’s military history and institutional experiences are analyzed in detail. From this level of analysis it becomes readily apparent what each militias’ relative combat ability was on the eve of the Revolution. In Defense of Hearth and Home constitutes a comprehensive examination of the military history of the thirteen colonial militias. Forgotten Warriors- Forgotten Battles is written to stand alone. However, all of the material in In Defense of Hearth and Home has been condensed into Chapters 1 and 2 of this work. While all the essential concepts are present in those chapters, the demands of brevity forced me to exclude many concepts and examples that help to augment and clarify the main arguments. If you find this work interesting, I highly recommend In Defense of Hearth and Home to you for a fuller understanding of the colonial and Revolutionary militias and their contributions to our nation’s history and independence.

a New York in 1673 does not count. As a Dutch colony just conquered by the English, when the Dutch invaded, the mostly Dutch militia unsurprisingly failed to turn out.

a Though their contribution at Omaha Beach was limited, on the other landing beaches they were more successful.

a For a more complete analysis of the colonial militias read In Defense of Hearth and Home. Chapter 1 is a distillation of that work.

Chapter One

The Colonial Militia’s Germanic Origins and

Development from 1607 to 1774

The militiaman who stepped onto Lexington Green in 1775 did not take the field as a member of a new military institution. He represented the latest incarnation of a long established military tradition spanning 1,500 years, past the Middle and Dark Ages and stretching into the time of Rome’s expansion into the Germanic tribal heartlands. The western genesis of the idea that free men are responsible for defending themselves, their families, and their rights had its origin in Germanic tribal traditions. Tacitus writes in Germania that all free Germans were warriors, and tribal leaders had the right to call on all free men for armed service. Tacitus even records that the Germanic definition of a free man was one who bears arms. This warrior tradition, brought to England by the Germanic Angles and Saxons, formed the foundation upon which the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd was based.a In Anglo-Saxon England, the Fyrd comprised all free men organized into a warrior army to defend their kingdom, village, and families. The Fyrd was an early manifestation of the ‘nation in arms.’¹

The army on the left is employing an Anglo-Saxon Shield Wall.

The Fyrd was the basis of the Anglo-Saxon military until 1066 AD when William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. During The Middle Ages, the concept of a citizen militia in England slumbered but never quite died. In the early 16th century, King Henry VIII began reviving the English militia. But it was Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) who established the militia as England’s primary defense force. She also gave them their namesake, the Elizabethan Militia. Elizabeth I was a monarch with impressive vision. Early on she foresaw the inevitability of a confrontation with Spain.

Upon assuming the purple in 1533, Elizabeth I made military revitalization a high priority. She placed a heavy emphasis on an effective national militia. Crown mandated national musters were held every three years from 1558 on. As the conflict with Spain loomed, they were held every year. Statutes were issued in 1511 and 1588 codifying the militia. All able-bodied men ages 16-60 were enrolled. Weapon requirements varied and were tied to individual wealth. Militia companies, organized by hundred and shire, were commanded by landed gentry, prominent citizens, and minor nobles. Soldiers were divided into several classes: trained and armed, untrained, and unarmed. After national musters, the Crown received detailed reports on the training, number, and condition of each company’s men and equipment. County musters were held twice a year initially, and later thrice. Company musters were frequent. Considerable care was taken to hold all musters outside of the sowing and harvest seasons. Considerable time, resources, and energy were invested to equip, man, and train the Elizabethan militia.²

Elizabeth’s militia became the institutional parent to America’s militias. The English settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth were, by definition, Elizabethan militiamen. When they landed in the New World, they became their own defense force as no soldiers were sent with them. Miles Standish and John Smith were professional soldiers and the military leaders of their respective colonies. The settlers’ weapons, armor, and tactics were initially that of Elizabeth’s militia. Indeed, many early militia companies styled themselves ‘Train Bands,’ the Train Band of Providence, Rhode Island being one example. So what legacy did the Elizabethan militia bequeath to the colonial militias?

A survey of the Elizabethan militia suggests certain institutional capabilities. A cardinal one was the ability to rapidly field large numbers. At the height of its readiness, Elizabeth’s militia mustered 300,000 men; 115,000 were considered trained and armed. The Elizabethan militia provided an effective yet economical defense. The presence of Train Bands in every shire and county held another advantage. Elizabeth’s militia possessed the priceless military quality of omnipresence. It was strategically impossible to outflank or out feint a force that was simultaneously present in every shire and hundred. The colonial militias would possess this same capability.³

While these were considerable strengths; there were disadvantages. It took time to man, equip, train, and inspect militia companies. It took time to properly sow, tend, and harvest crops and time was always limited. There was never enough for both. Herein lies the rub. This time and resource conflict is nowhere more apparent than in 1585. In the Anglo-Spanish War’s first year the crop yield was exceptionally poor. In time of war, the Crown cancelled the national muster to allow farmers to maximize the harvest. In a contest of priorities between hunger and war readiness, hunger won, hands down. Elizabeth understood that starvation can kill just as readily, just as surely as a matchlock ball or pike thrust.

This event highlights the militias’ key institutional weakness: they were prone to cycles of decay and regeneration. The Elizabethan militia achieved a fairly high level of readiness in preparation to oppose the Spanish Armada. But, as soon as the threat faded, so did militia readiness. Readiness and competence in militias are directly tied to the immediacy and degree of perceived threat. As the perceived threat increases, militia competence increases; the converse is also true of course. Under imminent threat, the ever present danger stimulates high militia competence. Equipment is updated and repaired, training is frequent, attendance and motivation are high. As the threat fades, so does the impetus to maintain readiness. The demands of the farm increase, or so it seems. Training days decrease, and the intensity of those that do occur lessens. Equipment breaks down; the militia decays. We have seen this dynamic in the Elizabethan militia and possibly in the Fyrd. We will see it in the colonial militias. Militia competence is a much more variable creature than that of a professional army; it defines the difference between amateurs and professionals.

Another militia weakness concerns the length of time needed to achieve high proficiency. Militia systems tend to decay during peace. After a prolonged peace, it often takes a protracted effort to return to combat readiness. Once allowed to fully decay, a militia system is very hard to reinvigorate.

The nascent colonial militias inherited many features directly from Queen Elizabeth’s national militia and distantly from the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd. Such components as shire and county muster systems, muster master leaders and trainers, law codes requiring service of all males aged 16-60 and stipulating their equipment were all transferred ‘whole cloth’ to the colonial militias. Tactical innovations such as coastal early warning systems, cooperative and complex militia defense plans to converge on and mass against incursions, and the development of tactics emphasizing militia strengths all make their appearance in the colonial militias.⁴

The Infamous Push of Pike- this is nearly the polar opposite of combat employed by Powhatan or King Philip’s warriors.

The Fyrd’s and Elizabethan militias’ strengths and weaknesses were transferred to the colonial militias. As they developed, the colonial militias displayed many of these same strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities. When the first redcoat stepped onto Lexington Common, he did not face a new kind of army. In that colonial militiaman, he faced a dim reflection of his own nation’s heritage. He faced a descendant of the same military tradition that had fought at Stamford Bridge and Hastings. At Lexington an army came face to face with a people.

Methods of Warfare

When the first Englishmen landed in Virginia and Massachusetts they brought with them their experience as Elizabethan militiamen, and a uniquely European method of warfare. European combat tactics bore little resemblance to that of the indigenous North American tribes. Warfare was characterized by large masses of infantry ranked shoulder to shoulder, wielding 14-20 foot long pikes, maneuvering on level plains. Musketeers stood on the flanks armed with matchlock muskets. As the opposing pike masses closed, musketeers poured un-aimed volleys into the enemy. Then the pike masses clashed, thousands of pikemen stabbing at each other in what was infamously called the ‘push of pike.’ This horrific confrontation lasted until one side broke, only to be ridden down by eagerly awaiting cavalry. Forests were avoided, stealth was unnecessary, and the musket fire was un-aimed; the command was to level not aim the musket. Aiming was superfluous when firing at 1,000 men ranked shoulder to shoulder in a mass 50 yards wide and 20 men deep. This was the warfare Jamestown and Plymouth settlers knew. Used to fighting en mass in the open, colonists lacked the stealth Powhatan warriors developed as children in the New World forests. Colonial defensive equipment was extensive and sophisticated. Steel helmets, cuirasses, chain mail, and leather and cotton buff armor coats that were proof against arrows were common. Below is a list of gear recommended by the Virginia Company: Armes for a man, but if halfe your men be armed it is well, so all have swords and peeces. 1 Armor compleat, light. 1 long peece five foot and a halfe, neere musket bore. 1 sword. 1 Belt. 1 Bandolier. 20 pound of powder. 60 pound of shot or lead, Pistoll and Goose shot. ⁵

Indian warfare differed greatly from Europe’s. It was seasonal and spasmodic in nature. It was highly individualistic, revolving around a warrior ethos. Individual exploits were highly prized, often at the expense of coordinated action. Stealth was a major facet of Indian warfare. In most tribes, women were responsible for farming, while the men were hunters. This inured warriors to life in the forest. In Captain John Smith’s Description of Virginia we have an account of Indian stealth: One Savage hunting alone, useth the skinne of a Deare slit on the one side, and so put on his arme, through the neck, so that his hand comes to the head which is stuffed, and the hornes, head, eies, eares, and every part as arteficially counterfeited as they can devise. Thus shrowding his body in the skinne, by stalking he approacheth the Deare, creeping on the ground from one tree to another.⁶

Warfare consisted of raids on opposing villages to take captives and plunder. Warriors attached particular importance to gaining honor by feats of bravery and taking captives without suffering casualties. Their primary weapon was the bow and arrow with which they were expert. But the bows were small, lethal only to some 40 yards. European steel cuirasses and even leather pikeman jackets were proof against arrows with wood, deer antler, or stone tips. For close combat, warriors relied on a variety of weapons. These included wooden swords, clubs with stag horn tips, or clubs tipped with stone. Defensive armor was negligible, a wooden target, a deerskin breastplate, or nothing at all.

While Indian tactics emphasized individual exploits, it was not unorganized. Captain Smith noted: "They have a method in warre, and for our pleasures they shewed it us, and it was in this manner performed at Mattapanient. Having painted and disguised themselves in the fiercest manner they could devise, they