Posted on 10/02/2009 5:16:07 PM PDT by GOPGuide
Until now, however, one plan has remained unknown: an 18th-century plot to invade with an American army during that country’s War of Independence.
Drawn up by a French general, the scheme was to bring over an American force of 10,000 that would find a Britain so distracted by the war on the other side of the Atlantic, that victory would seem certain. Just to make sure, however, the general suggested that the force include a corps of Native Americans, or “sauvages”, as he termed them, who would strike such fear in British troops that any resistance would collapse immediately.
The plan, which is being sold at auctioneers Bonhams in London next week as part of a lot of books, was drawn up by Charles-François Dumouriez when commander at Cherbourg. The document, which bears a pencil note saying it came from the papers of General Barthélemy Scherer, briefly Minister of War, says it would be easy to take the Americans across the Atlantic, and suggests if they landed in Ireland “they would be guaranteed success”.
With a corps of just 500 Native Americans, right, the document notes: “It is impossible to imagine the terror that would strike the British on seeing them”.
The scheme, which is sufficiently detailed to include discussion on the likely deployment of British forces, and the supplies, ships, horses and artillery needed, also considers what would happen if there were a shortage of Native Americans: “Even if the Bostonians could not assemble this number of savages, they could dress up and paint themselves,” it says. “These phantoms would be enough, by their mere appearance, to cause mass desertions amongst the British.”
It is not known how the Americans reacted to the proposal — if they ever knew.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
> With a corps of just 500 Native Americans, right, the document notes: “It is impossible to imagine the terror that would strike the British on seeing them”.
:)
ping
Charles-François Dumouriez
Of course. I remember reading that the reason the French lost the war against Austria was because the french officers had ten chefs and one spy while the Austrian officers had ten spies and one chef. Or so the story goes.
And people wonder why we name sports teams after them.
Sung by British troops marching into Washington D.C...
I know that name sounded familiar. He became a general for the French Revolutionary armies during the early stages of the war and was at Valmy when the after an artillery duel the Prussian army retreated. This saved the French revolutionaries. To save his neck, literally, he switched sides and eventually settled in Britain.
1. Most of the Indians in North America fought on the side of the Crown.
2. Even if they didn't, professional British soldiers, equipped with a Brown Bess, firing in mass at three rounds a minute, are not going to be scared by Indians in what amounts to a skirmish line. The North American woods are one thing. The open country of England is another.
3. Where the heck are you going to get 10,000 American troops for the invasion, that's pretty much Washington's whole army. Assuming Washington was to have a moment of temporary insanity to agree to this, you would strip the 13 Colonies of rebel forces. Which means while the Continental Army is off invading England. The British Army is capturing the Congress and winning the war.
4. How are you going to get 10,000 Americans to England without the Royal Navy sinking every last troopship?
5. Even if they land in England they will be outnumbered and alone in a hostile country. The entire army would be wiped out in weeks. 10,000 is a lot in North America, in Europe where the Crown has the British Army, the Hanoverian Army, and as many German mercenaries as you can buy, it is a drop in the bucket.
Minor nitpick: Navies frequently 'missed' eachother in the days of sail. The French were able to move substantial forces to North America to aid Washington's Army, and the Royal Navy (which nominally controlled the American coast) failed to intercept.
Also, John Paul Jones operated a flotilla of surface raiders off the British Isles. Yes, they were eventually intercepted (Bonhomme Richard v. HMS Serapis), but not before they attacked Brit shipping & even staged a minor raid of a seaport.
LS, have you ever heard about something like this?
ahhhh...yeah...sure.
The french are such brilliant thinkers in terms of winning wars. seems to me they even got their butts kicked by mexico in the 19th century.
hmm, you are quite correct there. Plus, the limey scalps are way better groomed than us colonials..they’ll love it.
Biggest mistake France ever made was supporting America in our revolution. The Ancien Régime had problems but what came after was orders worse. The tragedy unfolded because generals such as this thought they could duplicate the American success. But, instead of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Fisher Ames and Gouverneur Morris, France got Thomas Paine type looters and worse.
What struck fear in the hearts of Native Americans? The United States Army. Outnumbered, ill fed and supplied, sometimes with inferior arms, fighting an enemy in their own territory with almost no intelligence, the army prevailed.
Sounds like a great plot for an alternate history novel.
You are looking at it centuries later, it is because of the tales and the imagery of the period that physically landing painted savages on the Europeans shores would have wreaked emotional havoc, a kind of 100 to 1 ratio thing where rumors of painted savages would have freaked everyone out, kind of like paratroopers in WWII.
That's the part that got me, it would be a couple of weeks of British civilian chaos and fear and then the British army would get everything under control and mopped up.
Unlikely to strike any terror at all. The Brits had experience of fighting “sauvages” up in the Highlands :)
Are you sure they were troops and not Manchester United fans?
Good nitpick, but it becomes more difficult to hide a large force than a small one, and they aren’t as quick either (because you are limited to the speed of the slowest ship). Besides, they get a “fix” on your position when you make landfall and start landing all those troops. Landing 10,000 troops and their supplies would take some time.
No, never. But GLC has this pretty much right. I mean, what the hell? The whole Continental Army under Washington seldom got up to 10,000 after the initial defeats, even if you add in Greene’s men. And Indians? Yes, they once fought for the French and got screwed.
What have you been smoking? Are you seriously trying to paint the US Army as the underdogs when facing Native Americans?
As for the idea of Native American warriors being an effective force if landed in the British Isles, that is extremely doubtful, considering the main strength of the Native American warriors lay in their superior knowledge of the local terrain. An advantage that would be totally lost when transplanted outside their lands.
This whole plan was obviously cooked up by an idiot, as it is more like the surest way to let the British win the war by delivering their enemies right were they wanted them, with no where to escape or retreat to.....
I didn’t say they would be effective militarily, I said they would disturb the populace for a couple of weeks until the army got the raid under control and yes the tiny western American army was fighting a dangerous, lonely unappreciated war against the Indians.
America’s war against the Indians was kind of like Britain’s war with the Zulus. Fighting the natives only became really dangerous when those in command of the white side acted in a completely reckless and stupid manner.
Otherwise superior technology and logistics meant the Indians couldn’t hope to win....
The below is not from this book but to read a book that will show how bad off the army was during the Indian Wars read “Indian Fighting Army” and others like it. http://openlibrary.org/b/OL16965600M/Indian-fighting_army
Life in the Frontier Army
One of the determining factors about life in the U.S. Army on the frontiers of America was the small size of the force engaged in operations in relative isolation from the country and from the rest of the Army. The Army was scattered throughout hundreds of small forts, posts, outposts, and stations throughout the American West, often with little more than a company of cavalry or infantry in each post. This isolation bred, on one hand, a strong sense of camaraderie, of bonding, within the Army in a way that only shared suffering can do. The officers and men often felt part of an extended family that had to look inward for strength as it relied on its own customs, rituals, and sense of honor separate from that distant civilian world or even from the very different military society “back East.” This sense of unity, of “splendid isolation,” kept the Army as an institution together during the harsh missions of western frontier duty but at the same time led far too often to professional and personal stagnation. Promotion was slow, and chances for glory were few given the dangers and hardships of small-unit actions against an elusive foe.
It was a life at once dangerous and monotonous, comradely
and isolated, professionally rewarding and stultifying. With low pay, poor quarters, an indifferent public, and a skilled foe that was at once feared, hated, and admired, the officers and men of the frontier Army seemed caught in a never-ending struggle with an elusive enemy and their environment.
The manpower strains of all the various missions after the Civil War plus manning all the frontier posts and stations badly strained the resources of a shrinking Regular Army. As the post–Civil War Army took shape, its strength began a decade of decline, dropping from an 1867 level of 57,000 to half that in 1876, then leveling off at an average of 26,000 for the remaining years up to the War with Spain. Effective strength always lay somewhere below authorized strength, seriously impaired by high rates of sickness and desertion, for example. Because the Army’s military responsibilities were of continental proportions, involving sweeping distances, limited resources, and far-flung operations, an administrative structure was required for command and control. The Army was, therefore, organized on a territorial basis, with geographical segments variously designated as divisions, departments, and districts.
Development of a basic defense system in the trans-Mississippi West had followed the course of empire. Territorial acquisition and exploration succeeded by emigration and settlement brought the settlers increasingly into collision with the Indians and progressively raised the need for military posts along the transcontinental trails and in settled areas.
The annexation of Texas in 1845, the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute in 1846, and the successful conclusion of the Mexican War with the cession to the United States in 1848 of vast areas of land all had drawn the outlines of the major task facing the Army in the West in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Militarily successful in some cases, these operations nevertheless hardened Indian opposition, prompted wider provocations on both sides, and led to the delineation of an Indian barrier to westward expansion extending down the Great Plains from the Canadian to the Mexican border. Brig. Gen. William S. Harney, for example, responded to the Sioux massacre of Lt. John L. Grattan’s detachment with a punishing attack on elements of that tribe on the Blue Water in Nebraska in 1855. Farther south, Col. Edwin V. Sumner hit the Cheyennes on the Solomon Fork in Kansas in 1857 and Bvt. Maj. Earl Van Dorn fought the Comanches in two successful battles, at Rush Spring in future Oklahoma and Crooked Creek in Kansas in 1858 and 1859, respectively.
The Army on the Great Plains found itself in direct contact with a highly mobile and warlike culture that was not easily subdued.
In the Southwest, between the wars, Army units pursued Apaches and Utes in New Mexico Territory, clashing with the Apaches at Cieneguilla and Rio Caliente in 1854 and the Utes at Poncha Pass in 1855. There were various expeditions against branches of the elusive Apaches that involved hard campaigning but few conclusive engagements such as the one at Rio Gila in 1857. It was in this region in 1861 that Lt. George N. Bascom moved against Chief Cochise, precipitating events that opened a quarter century of hostilities with the Chiricahua Apaches.
In the Northwest, where numerous small tribes existed, there were occasional hostilities between the late 1840s and the middle 1860s. Their general character was similar to operations elsewhere: settler intrusion, Indian reaction, and U.S. Army or local militia counteraction with superior force. The more important events involved the Rogue River Indians in Oregon between 1851 and 1856 and the Yakima, Walla Walla, Cayuse, and other tribes on both sides of the Cascade Mountains in Washington in the latter half of the 1850s. The Army, often at odds with civil authority and public opinion in the area, found it necessary on occasion to protect Indians from settlers as well as the other way around.
In the quarter century of the Indian Wars the Army met the Indian in over a thousand actions, large and small, all across the American West. It fought these wars with peacetime strength and on a peacetime budget, while at the same time it helped shape Indian policy and was centrally involved in numerous other activities that were part and parcel of westward expansion and of the nation’s attainment of its “manifest destiny.” Along the way it developed a military culture of self-sufficiency, of experienced small-unit leaders and professionals serving together as part of a brotherhood of arms. Operations against the Indians seasoned the Army and forged a core of experienced leaders who would serve the republic well as it moved onto the world scene at the turn of the century.
Exactly the same thing could be said about the British Army that garrisoned the Empire at the same time, but the simple fact is, as long as commanders were reasonably competent and not completely contemptuous of the fighting ability of the tribesmen, they could win pretty much anytime and anywhere thanks to their superior technology....
No the the creation and settlement of the entire vast United States is nothing like this African thing that you keep bringing up.
And who had the most advanced technology at the Little Big Horn?
The British Empire was covered a lot more space than the continental US, with up to 1/4 of the world’s population, most of which was in India, which was garrisoned by about 10,000 in total. The main British reason this was possible was because of the vastly superior technology available to them, which worked for them every time as long as they didn’t become so arrogant as to believe it was all they needed.
Little Big Horn might have been relevent to your main point if it had been an example of the US Army triumphing against a superior opponent, but they lost, and the reason they lost was because Custer was reckless in splitting his forces and advancing deep into enemy territory and did not respect the dangerous potential of the enemy he was facing...
The Indians had the superior weapons against the US Army at little Bighorn and the British Army duties in the Empire had nothing in common with the American Army’s duties and responsibilities in our own United States and future states.
In what way were they different? They both had essentially the same mission. To keep the peace, go to war against warring tribes and to act as a garrison to deter outbreaks of hostility or contain them when they did break out.......
Study the settling and civilizing of the American western states and you will learn.
The British Empire did plenty of settling and ‘civilising’ of its own, how was this relevently different to what happened in the American West?
Maybe if you would drop anything to do with Britain and turn your attention to the United States and it’s western history and it’s American Army in Minnesota and California and Oregon and Arizona and Illinois and Oklahoma and Wyoming and so on, you would figure it out.
They did, but I'm not so sure that it was as decisive as you think. The Plains Indians often cut down the stocks on their Henry and Winchester repeaters to make them easier to wield on horseback. This would probably make the weapon less accurate. Skirmishers moving up on foot might still be effective, but on the whole I would think that if Custer had not divided his forces, his massed fire would have allowed him to drive off the attack -- even with their inferior rifles.
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