Protecting the Empire's Frontier: Officers of the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot during Its North American Service, 1767–1776

Introduction

 Introduction Britain’s redcoated soldier is often portrayed as one of the greatest villains in American history. However, just as the years have worn away the edges of the few buildings and monuments that the British left in America, time has ravaged the memory of the individuals who served with King George III’s army.A few examples remain notable, such as Earl Cornwallis, who is remembered for surrendering at Yorktown (Virginia) but not for his later successes in India; one of the Howe brothers,Admiral Richard or General William; or even Banastre Tarleton, the dashing but ruthless cavalry commander. However, unlike soldiers from wars both earlier and later, few if any individual soldiers or regimental officers from the American Revolution have made it into the flow of history. Unfortunately, the caricature that results from obscurity and the fog of time is not favorable, to either the British regular soldier or hisAmerican opponent.To appreciate the hurdles that the founders of the United States faced, it is important to view the British Army in terms of the professional career officers and solid brave soldiers of which it was mainly composed.On the whole,the officers were neither the blindly dogmatic martinets nor the foppish wastrels popularly portrayed in American literature and film. These individual officers and men deserve to be more fully included in the annals of history. In this study, we will look at the officer corps of the British Army through the example of the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot.Historian Richard Kohn argued in 1981 that in order to make progress in military  Protecting the Empire’s Frontier history, historians need to do three things. First, they have to seek the “true identity of soldiers”by grounding them in the communities and times from which they came.Second,they have to reconstruct military life at a“greater level of depth and detail.”Third, they should pay more attention to the interaction between the military and the rest of society.1 This book will follow Kohn’s directives for social historians by providing biographies of each of the officers of the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot,including not only their military service but also their lives before and after their military service. In conducting a review of the officers of the British Army of the period, one must consider the effect of the emerging regimental system. The eighteenth-century British Army was based on the regimental system ,which had been established in the 1680s and was further solidified by the numbering of the regiments in 1751.After 1751, a marching regiment (which is what a regular regiment was called) was no longer known only by its colonel’s name; instead, it had an identity that transcended its commanding officer. By the end of the French and Indian War (1755–1763), the regiments were almost uniformly known by their numbers and addressed as such in correspondence, both official and unofficial. I have chosen the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot for a number of reasons. First, elements of the regiment served throughout more of British North America than most other regiments did before the start of hostilities in 1775. Second, most of the surviving common soldiers of the regiment were drafted (i.e., transferred to other regiments) in December 1775, whereas the cadre of officers, noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and drummers went home; thus the stories of the men who had served in the Royal Irish help tell the stories of many other regiments that continued to serve in America.Third, the records of the regiment are remarkably intact. Unlike many of the regiments that served in America before and during the American Revolution,nearly all of the regimental muster returns and many other documents are extant.The large number of general courts-martial involving the regiment provide additional primary source materials that provide insight into the officers and men of the regiment.Fourth,the regiment has been virtually ignored by historians since 1922, when the regiment was disbanded upon the establishment of the Irish Free State. The Early History of the Regiment The 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot was among the oldest regiments in the British Army when it embarked for America in May 1767 from  i nt roduc ti on Cork Harbor, Ireland.The title “Royal Regiment of Ireland” dates back to 1660, when King Charles II formed it as a regiment of...