HISTORY: In 1763 the future looked very bright for King George III. That year's Treaty of Paris put the seal on the British victory over France in the ownership fight for the new world.
Britain controlled all of Canada and all of America east of the Mississippi and nobody was happier than the American colonists who had played a significant role in the British victory and whose loyalty to the crown was unquestioned. And yet, just 12 years later, most of those colonists, agitated and irritated by British taxes and interference, were hell bent on independence and at war with Britain.
In the seven years of the war, New York, then second to Philadelphia in population, saw little by way of pitched battle but its military significance was considerable. The first major battle of the war, at Bunker Hill just outside Boston, was fought in June 1775 and while the British emerged victorious it was at great cost with more than twice the dead and wounded suffered by the Americans. Those losses determined George III and his government to eschew dialogue and go for total military victory.
Barnet Schecter, a New York writer and historian whose first book this is, has written an exhaustingly researched and interesting history of New York through the seven years of war. Schecter explains cogently that, while the most important battles of the war occurred away from the city, its strategic significance at all times was immense. Following their inglorious evacuation of Boston after a 10-month siege, the British decided that if they sailed south and captured New York, they could, if they linked up with troops coming down from Canada, split the enemy in two.
Then covering little more than the tip of Manhattan and much smaller than Philadelphia, New York was seized by the British a year after Bunker Hill. The decisive engagement was the Battle of Brooklyn across the East River. It was the largest battle of the war and it all started over watermelons. Two British scouts diverted into a watermelon patch with the intention of helping themselves only to be spotted and fired on by American riflemen. Reinforcements were called and by the next day the battle was raging. The outcome was a decisive victory for the British but, and this would happen again and again, the British failed to follow through and the greater part of the defeated American army sliped away.
The martial law which the Americans had imposed on New York (freedom of expression being one of the first casualties despite this being a struggle for independence) was followed promptly by British martial law which, if anything, was more convivial by being more orderly. For the rest of the war the Americans never tried to re-take the city. The British, though, thought they would and kept it well garrisoned in preparation. As a consequence, the British had fewer troops to spare where they needed them. This was particularly the case in the crucial Battle of Yorktown in Virginia by which stage France had entered the war on the American side and altered greatly the numerical balance.
The American force, known as the Continental Army, was for the most part a motley collection of poorly equipped and badly paid amateurs. Mass desertions and mutinies were a regular threat. The British troops on the other hand were well equipped and trained. They had far more muskets than the Americans and they had bayonets, which really counted. Nearly two feet long with a three-sided blade, they made gaping wounds that could not be sutured. In addition, the British were backed up by thousands of mercenaries from Hesse and they earned their pay; in many of the battles Hessian casualties far outnumbered the British.
However, the British were poorly led and a constant lack of decisiveness and determination resulted in the Continental Army withstanding defeats and coming back stronger to fight again. When France entered the war the game was virtually up and the defeat at Yorktown convinced a new British government that continued pursuit of an expensive war thousands of miles from the homeland was not worth the candle.
The author illustrates well the conflicts within New York between the rebels and those who - mostly for financial reasons - stayed loyal to the crown. As always, religion also came into it. When the British seized what was then New Amsterdam in 1664 they granted religious freedom to the Dutch inhabitants and extended this tolerance to the Lutherans, Quakers, Baptists, Jews, Catholics and many others who arrived in the city over the following century. Toleration of diversity did not, however, mean equality and the Anglican Church did much to undermine the other faiths, especially Presbyterianism.
The patrician families were predominantly Anglican and those of a different persuasion who aspired to join the establishment could either convert or move somewhere else; those who chose the former and lined up with the loyalists soon wished they hadn't. They faced a bleak future when the war was over and within a year almost 30,000 of them had scuttled off to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to start anew. The city was not retaken until peace was declared whereupon George Washington, as commander-in-chief, entered Fort George and raised the Stars and Stripes. This took a little longer than anticipated because the departing British troops sabotaged and greased the flagpole.
There are two schools of thought on the generalship of George Washington. It is a given that despite woefully inadequate manpower he managed over time to fashion a fighting force of considerable strength. However, a revisionist view would hold that he was exceptionally brutal to his own troops and would undoubtedly have lost the war (there was a really disastrous excursion into Canada) but for the greater incompetence of the British. The author is no revisionist. He paints a picture of a firm leader, often poorly served and even betrayed by his officers, who was a master of the tactical retreat - and needed to be given the gormless cowards he often had to rely on. He was also adept at intelligence gathering and putting it to good use. He had indifferent support from his political masters most of the time but they did, in fairness, stamp on the suggestion when the British were closing on New York that it be burned to the ground, the justification being that it was mostly owned by loyalists.
There would be little new for avid students of the war in this book and it may contain too much military minutia for some readers but it is a solid read and comprehensively illustrated, particularly with maps. Schecter tells an extraordinary story and tells it well.
Eoin McVey is managing editor of The Irish Times
Eoin McVey