I have been watching what i think is a US TV show called Turn ? Set in the war of independence they keep referring to the British army (red coats) as the Royal Army.
This mystifies me because the Army has never been the Royal army unlike the Royal Navy and the Royal Airforce . The army dates from the time of the English civil war where the army marched for noblemen and parliament and went on to become the new model army of the Parliamentarian forces. What was the kings army known as the royalists were defeated in 1651 and never reformed.
The British army has royal regiments like the royal engineers and the royal Artillery but its never been a Royal army ?
I watched and enjoyed Turn but questioned a lot of the history in it. Not so much the historical characters but the "spies". There's a great deal of hollywood in the story, why they feel they need to do this I don't know because the real stories are just as dramatic as anything hollywood could come up with.
John Graves Simcoe is a character who I think it's portraited very harshly. I don't know exact history in that area, I'm know cruel acts were inflicted from all sides (not both sides, the Revolution was multifaceted) but from what I have read Simcoe was not the psychopath that's portrayed in Turn. I mean afterall, the man ended slavery in Upper Canada with a stroke of a pin and not a shot fired.
But on the other hand... Banastre Tarleton, it seems his history has been rather whitewashed over time. The term Tarleton's quarter was earned by his on action. Today "they" claim he simply lost control of the loyalist militia under his command. Contemporary reports are pretty clear that it was British regulars who killed surrendering and wounded Patriots instead of giving them quarter they expected.
I've been reading a lot about the Revolution lately, read Nate Philbrook series (Most excellent, as is all his work) and Rick Atkinson is 2 books into his treatment (rather lighter treatment than you get from Philbrook) . It's taught me things I never heard before, I didn't realize how fighting there was in the New York area, I knew there was a battle or so but not to the extent that it was.
To that point, if you have the chance to see Ken Burn's The Revolution....pass on it. I'm not going to get into point by point how wrong it was but someone should put a disclaimer on the screen that it's all rubbish. I mean he talks about Frankin being "interviewed" by parliament instead of the humiliation he received there. It's said he went in to the cockpit a British subject and came out an American as he had lost all hope of any reconciliation. And Burns calls it an interview...
The truth about Turn is that there was a Culpepper spy ring that did feed information and disinformation. To this day we still don't know all the members and will likely never know.
Another thought, one of the greatest waste of history, American history, is the fact that Martha burned all the letters between George and her after his death. ALL of them. There's only a few that survived.
Sadly there is scant little in media that does justice to the Revolution. Don't even get me started on the movie the Patriot...
Sorry for getting so long...I got a weak spot for getting on the stump about this stuff.
Who thought that up ?
