[citation needed] In December 1775, at the age of 21, the volunteer-soldier Banastre Tarleton sailed from Cork to North America, where the American War of Independence (1775–83) had broken out.

Tarleton sailed with Lord Cornwallis as part of an expedition to capture the southern city of Charleston, South Carolina.

[7] After that expedition failed, at the Battle of Sullivan's Island (28 June 1776), Tarleton went north to join the main British Army under command of General William Howe, in New York.

Under the command of Colonel William Harcourt, Tarleton, as a cornet, was part of a scouting party sent to gather intelligence on the movements of General Charles Lee, in New Jersey.

[8] One such battle, in 1778, was an attack upon a communications outpost on Signal Hill in Easttown Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, which was guarded by troops commanded by Capt.

[10] After becoming commander of the British Legion, a force of American Loyalist cavalry and light infantry, Tarleton went to South Carolina at the beginning of 1780.

Forty years later, Robert Brownfield, a surgeon’s mate in the Second South Carolina Regiment at the time of the battle, wrote an account.

[13] Regardless of the extent to which they were true or false, the reports of British atrocities motivated Whig-leaning colonials to support the American Revolution.

[17] He defeated Thomas Sumter at Fishing Creek, aka "Catawba Fords", but was less successful when he encountered the same general at Blackstock's Farm in November 1780.

[8] On 17 January 1781, Tarleton's forces were virtually destroyed by American Brigadier General Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens.

Washington pursued Tarleton for sixteen miles, but gave up the chase when he came to the plantation of Adam Goudylock near Thicketty Creek.

…he was received home with universal acclaim, being feted at court and becoming an intimate friend to two future kings, George Prince of Wales and William Duke of Clarence…[30]Tarleton sat for portraits by three leading artists in London: Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Cosway.

Wearing the uniform of the British Legion, he props one leg up on a cannon to re-fix his sword to his belt before changing horses.

[31] [b] The pose disguises Tarleton’s mutilated right hand, of which he lost two fingers to a musket ball at the Battle of Guilford Court House.

[33] John Tarleton wrote to their mother in evident pride, “The picture of my Brother at Gainsborough's will not measure with the frame less than 12 feet 6 inches.

He held that “none of the misfortunes of the very unfortunate campaign of 1781 can, with the smallest degree of justice, be imputed to me.”[40] [41] Cornwallis rebutted Clinton’s claims the same year.

[42] They continued to trade shots for years after the treaty was signed, attempting to prove themselves blameless for the loss of thirteen of the provinces in North America.

[46] Of all the British documentation about the war, Tarleton’s History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America[44] has remained a resource for historians.

Tarleton continued to serve in the British Army and was promoted to colonel on 22 November 1790,[47] to major-general on 4 October 1794 and to lieutenant-general on 1 January 1801.

[48][49] Whilst on service in Portugal, Tarleton succeeded William Henry Vane, 3rd Earl of Darlington as colonel of the Princess of Wales's Fencible Dragoons in 1799.

Thorne wrote "most of his speeches in his first two sessions in the House assailed the 'mistaken philanthropy' of abolishing the slave trade, which Liverpool Members were instructed to oppose.

[citation needed] Tarleton ultimately married Susan Bertie, the young, illegitimate and wealthy daughter of the 4th Duke of Ancaster in 1798.

During the American War of Independence, Tarleton made popular a leather helmet with antique style applications and a fur plume (woolen for lower ranks) protruding far into the upper front side.

[59] Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Tarleton shows him wearing the helmet; it was worn by all ranks in the British Legion.

Royal Horse Artillery troops wore the helmet until the end of the Napoleonic Wars, as did light dragoon regiments from about 1796 to 1812.

Below that is the motto “PAT:A CONCITA  FULM:NT NATI.”(roughly translated, “When their country calls, her sons answer in tones of thunder.”) Lot 2[65] was the complete stand of three regimental colours of the 3rd Virginia Detachment.

But the British Legion was never an irregular partisan unit, and though it carried out many daring raids, it was a mixed force of dragoon cavalry, light Infantry and small calibre artillery.

[80][81] Later, Scotti elaborated:[82] In 1957, Robert Duncan Bass coined the phrase in his eloquent biography of Tarleton…With the publication of The Green Dragoon, “Bloody Tarleton” became a part of the American heritage and the national psyche.Knight agreed with that origin, saying[83] Both labels appear no earlier than the 1950s, originating in the Robert Bass book The Green Dragoon.and The two personal monikers, the alternatingly violent and romantic caricatures by which Tarleton is now largely known, are sobriquets of pure fiction.

Scotti searched many sources, in particular the writing of Laurens and the Marquis de La Fayette, to whom Custis claimed Tarleton first complained.

[85][29] Supporting Scotti's conclusion, a 1978 book about the end of the war, “The Campaign That Won America: The Story of Yorktown”, authored by Burke Davis,[86] mentions only that “all the ranking British and German officers were invited”.