Banastre Tarleton (21 August 1754 – 15 January 1833) was a general of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War, leading a unit of dragoons in the later stages of the war in the southern theater. Tarleton was accused of massacring American troops in the Waxhaw Massacre in 1780, and he was forced to return home after the Battle of Cowpens and his surrender at Gloucester during the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, becoming a member of parliament.
Biography[]
Banastre Tarleton was born on 21 August 1754, the third son of the Mayor of Liverpool in England. Tarleton studied at Oxford in preparation for becoming a lawyer, but he squandered all of his 5,000 pounds on gambling and women at The Cocoa Tree club in London before buying a commission in the British Army in 1775. He sailed to North America with a cavalry regiment alongside General Charles Cornwallis, and he captured Charles Lee before fighting at the Battle of Brandywine and other battles in 1777 and 1778.
In 1780, leading Tarleton's Raiders (a mixture of British and loyalist cavalrymen), he took part in the Siege of Charleston and its capture before carrying out the Waxhaw Massacre of 1780 against surrendering American troops after he was unhorsed. Tarleton criticized Cornwallis' restrained methods and used ruthlessness, and in 1780 the Americans used "Tarleton's quarter" against Patrick Ferguson's troops in the Battle of King's Mountain in revenge. In 1781, the final battle came at the Battle of Cowpens, where he faced off with Daniel Morgan's army. Tarleton's army was destroyed by the Americans, and he was captured after surrendering Gloucester to the Continental Army in October 1781 after the Siege of Yorktown.
In 1790, he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool, and he joined the Whigs, strongly supporting slavery. He died in 1833 at the age of 78.