General Sir Henry Clinton, KB (16 April 1730 – 23 December 1795) was a British Army officer and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1772 and 1795.

The 2nd Battalion, 1st Foot Guards, was deployed to Germany to participate in the Seven Years' War, arriving at Bremen on 30 July 1760 then joining the main Army, operating under Conway's Corps near Warberg.

These included Charles Lee and William Alexander, who styled himself "Lord Stirling"; both of these men would face Clinton as enemies in North America.

The young man, described by his father as having "sloth and laziness" and "despicable behavior", was virtually unmanageable, and Clinton convinced the duke to put him into a French academy.

He inspected some of the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War with his friend Henry Lloyd, a general in the Russian army, and had an audience with Joseph II in Vienna.

Clinton was an advocate for fortifying currently unoccupied high ground surrounding Boston, and plans were laid to occupy those spots on 18 June.

[28] However, the colonists learned of the plan and fortified the heights of the Charlestown peninsula on the night of 16–17 June, forcing the British leadership to rethink their strategy.

[29] In a war council held early on 17 June, the generals developed a plan calling for a direct assault on the colonial fortification, and Gage gave Howe command of the operation.

[30][31] After two assaults failed, Clinton, operating against his orders from General Gage, crossed over to Charlestown to organize wounded and dispirited troops milling around the landing area.

After Howe took command of the forces following General Gage's recall in September, the two of them established a working relationship that started out well, but did not take long to begin breaking down.

Delayed by logistics and weather, this force, which included Major General Charles Cornwallis as Clinton's second in command and Admiral Sir Peter Parker did not arrive off the North Carolina coast until May.

[42] The bombardment in its turn failed because the spongy palmetto logs used to construct the fort absorbed the force of the cannonballs without splintering and breaking.

At the 27 August Battle of Long Island, British forces led by Howe and Clinton, following the latter's plan, successfully flanked the American forward positions, driving them back into their fortifications on Brooklyn Heights.

[45] However, Howe refused Clinton's recommendation that they follow up the overwhelming victory with an assault on the entrenched Americans, due to a lack of intelligence as to their strength and a desire to minimize casualties.

In October Clinton led the army ashore in Westchester County in a bid to trap Washington between the Hudson and Bronx Rivers.

[50] In November Howe ordered Clinton to begin preparing an expedition to occupy Newport, Rhode Island, desired as a port by the Royal Navy.

[57] Clinton was surprised and upset that he would be left to hold New York with 7,000 troops, dominated by Loyalist formations and Hessians, an arrangement he saw as inadequate to the task.

[67] There was a shortage of transports for all of the Loyalists fleeing Philadelphia, so Clinton acted against his direct orders and decided to move the army to New York by land instead of by sea.

[69] Clinton burnished his reputation at home by writing a report on the movement that greatly exaggerated the size of Washington's Continental Army and minimised the British casualties at Monmouth.

[71] Once Clinton learned of his destination, he marshalled troops to reinforce the Newport garrison while Lord Howe sailed to meet d'Estaing.

He wrote to the Right Honourable Wellbore Ellis on 11 May 1782: "I cannot, Sir, too much lament the great Imprudence shown by the Refugees on this Occasion – as these very ill timed Effects of their Resentment may probably introduce a System of War horrid beyond Description.

Nor can I sufficiently pity my Successor’s having the Misfortune of coming to the Command at so disagreeable and critical a Period … Allowance ought to be made for Men whose Minds may possibly be roused to Vengeance by Acts of Cruelty committed by the Enemy on their dearest Friends … I cannot but observe that the Conduct of the Board during this whole Transaction has been extraordinary, not to say, reprehensible; … for the purpose (it is presumed) of exciting the War of indiscriminate Retaliation, which they appear to have long thirsted after.

Germain felt that raiding expeditions should be conducted "with spirit and humanity" to destroy American commerce and privateering;[78] this strategy was one Clinton disliked.

Clinton ordered two major raiding expeditions, one against Connecticut, the other against Chesapeake Bay, while Washington detached troops to deal with the increasing frontier war, which was primarily orchestrated from Quebec.

[83] However, the reinforcements, including Admiral Arbuthnot, were late in arriving, and Stony Point was retaken by the Americans after Clinton weakened its garrison to supply men for the Connecticut raids.

[85] Further actions from New York were rendered impossible by the need for the naval squadron to address the American expedition to dislodge a newly established British outpost in Penobscot Bay.

Consequently, tens of thousands of enslaved men, women, and children gained freedom -- immediate and without condition -- behind British lines, resulting in what historian Cassandra Pybus has called "the single greatest act of abolition in early American history.

Part of this may be due to George Germain, whose correspondence with Cornwallis may have convinced the junior officer to start disregarding the orders of his superior and consider himself to be an independent command.

[96] In 1782, after fighting in the North American theater ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Clinton was replaced as Commander-in-Chief by Sir Guy Carleton, and he returned to England.

The biographer William Willcox, in his analysis of Clinton's tenure in North America, observes that at times, "Sir Henry's ideas were not carried out for reasons that lay to some extent within himself"[100] and that he and Admiral Graves "apparently ignored the danger" of de Grasse in 1781.