Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

CORNWALLIS ’ S INVASION OF NORTH CAROLINA , 1780

157

... constant trickle of trained infantry across the Atlantic had outstripped recruiting. The wastage of British troops in the western Atlantic between 1777 and 1779 had been 15,664, but only 4,786 recruits had been sent out to replace them. Though fresh regiments had been sent out 16,000 strong, the old regiments already in the theatres of war were wasting away . 30 The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, which was in America for the duration of the war, concluded that through various circumstances, ‘the majority of soldiers who joined the 23rd during the preceding decade never left America’. 31 Whilst reinforcements to Cornwallis’s army did arrive later in the year, they only temporarily stemmed the loss of troops due to illness, desertion, and battle casualties. Illness was a fourth major problem for the British Army in the South throughout 1779 and 1780. Over 50 percent of the 71st Regiment at the beginning of August 1780 was unfit for duty with the typical maladies of yellow fever, typhus, dysentery, and malaria. 32 Amongst three regiments (the 23rd, 33rd and 71st) in Cornwallis’s army, the rate of illness was over 35 percent. 33 Both the 71st and 63rd Regiments would be forced to remain in South Carolina during the invasion of North Carolina because of widespread illness. The 7th Regiment, which was slated to reinforce Cornwallis, also became ‘reduced to nothing’, and was unable to participate in the campaign. 34 The Earl’s ‘first division’ initially advanced into North Carolina with only two Regular regiments (the 23rd and 33rd) and a total of 1,250 men . 35 Cornwallis and his officers were not immune from these maladies. In September 1780, every officer of the British Legion except one was ill, leaving no one to lead his only cavalry force . 36 Before advancing into North Carolina, his commissary became ill and his aide-de-camp had to fill that position. 37 At another point in late August, when Cornwallis wanted to advance, he lamented that his medical staff was ill and unfit for duty, as was every high-ranking officer in his command. 38 Cornwallis himself, for several weeks during the retreat from Charlotte, was so ill that he delegated command to Colonel Rawdon. If illness among the forces in the ‘sickly season’ was not unanticipated, it nonetheless obliged Cornwallis to change his patterns of movement, and to re-allocate much- needed manpower away from the invasion so as to care for and protect the sick. 30 P. Mackesy, The War for America: 1775-1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), p. 368. 31 M. Urban, Fusiliers: The Saga of a British Redcoat Regiment in the American Revolution (New York: Walker & Company, 2007), p. 292. 32 P.E. Kopperman, ‘The Medical Dimension in Cornwallis’s Army, 1780-1781’, The North Carolina Historical Review , vol. 89, no. 4, (October 2012), p. 377. 33 Kopperman, ‘Medical Dimension’, p. 371. 34 Rawdon to Balfour, 21 Oct. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 126. 35 Atkinson, ‘British Forces in North America’, p. 20.

36 Cornwallis to Clinton, 21 Sept. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 45. 37 Cornwallis to Balfour, 31 Aug. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 66. 38 Cornwallis to Clinton, 23 Aug. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 17.