Drawing on hundreds of specialist sources, contemporary and archival, Patriot Battles is the comprehensive one-volume study of the military aspects of the War of Independence. The first part of the book offers a richly detailed examination of the nuts and bolts of eighteenth-century combat: For example, who fought and what motivated them, whether patriot or redcoat, Hessian or Frenchman? How were they enlisted and trained? How were they clothed and fed? What weapons did they use, and how effective were they? When soldiers became casualties or fell ill, how did medical services deal with them? What roles did loyalists, women, blacks, and Indians play?

The second part of the book gives a closer look at the war's greatest battles, with maps provided for each. Which men were involved, and how many? What was the state of their morale and equipment? What parts did terrain and weather play? What were the qualities of the respective commanders, and what tactics did they employ? How many casualties were inflicted? And no less important, how did the soldiers fight?

Throughout, many cherished myths are challenged, reputations are reassessed, and long-held assumptions are tested. For all readers, Patriot Battles becomes not only one of the most satisfying and illuminating works to be added to the literature on the War of Independence in many years but also a refreshing wind blowing through some of its dustier corridors.

The American Soldier...

After the first heady flush of enthusiasm following the spectacular successes over the British at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker's Hill during that glorious spring and summer of 1775 when close to 20,000 American patriots of all stations of society from the New England states had snatched up their motley collection of arms to support the insurrection, worthy patriots refused to join the ranks in impressive numbers. From that time on, the war, far from being a populist, "democratic" affair, became a military burden shouldered almost exclusively by the poorest segments of American society. No matter how persuasive the rhetoric of freedom, the siren call of self-interest and the urgent demands of survival were often more compelling. John Adams, writing on 1 February 1776, saw it clearly, if ruefully.

The service was too new; they had not yet become attached to it by habit. Was it credible that men who could get at home better living, more comfortable lodgings, more than double the wages, in safety, not exposed to the sicknesses of the camp, would bind themselves during the war? I knew it to be impossible.¹

And it would drive George Washington into regular conniptions throughout his tenure as commander in chief.

How did some and not other Americans end up looking down the business end of the barrel of a musket across that fateful fifty yards of killing ground? There were essentially three organizations in which they could volunteer or be forced to "volunteer." The first was the states' militias; the second, the states' troops who were normally drafted or "levied" from the militia for short terms of service and for specific tasks, such as guarding strategic points within the state; the third, after Congress "adopted" the "motley Crew" of citizen-soldiers on 14 June 1775 who were besieging the British at Boston, the Continental army—the regulars. All three types might appear on the monthly returns of regular army strength if militia and state troops had been co-opted to serve with the Continentals.²

The Militia

The institution of the militia had been built into the fabric of the earliest colonies. The necessity not only to protect their settlements but also, where expedient, to expand their holdings, meant that technically every able-bodied man from the ages of sixteen to sixty was required to turn up, armed, for regular training and, if necessary, make himself available for longer periods of service. For example, the Patriot Committee of Frederick County, Virginia, proclaimed in the spring of 1775: "Every Member of this County between sixteen & sixty years of Age, shall appear once every Month, at least, in the Field under Arms; & it is recommended to all to muster weekly for their Improvement."³

In the beginning it had been a decidedly convenient arrangement for Britain to set up what were essentially trading satellites charged with the responsibility of defending themselves with little financial drag on the mother country. It was only after the French and Indian War (1754–63) that the cost/profit ratio of Britain's American empire shifted in an uncomfortable direction. Britain's national debt rose from £75 million to a whopping £130 million.⁴ And in part, it was Britain's attempt to balance the increasingly wayward ledger books of its colonial investment that drove the colonies into insurrection.

Within each state not all were equally bound by the militia contract. Some, the lowest of the low in colonial society—slaves, Indians, white indentured servants and apprentices, and itinerant laborers...

Michael Stephenson is formerly the editor of the Military Book Club, the largest of its kind in the world. He was the editor of and a contributor to National Geographic's Battlegrounds: Geography and the History of Warfare and the coauthor of The Nuclear Casebook. He lives in New York City.