Fusiliers, Eight Years with the Redcoats in America
by Mark Urban
Faber and Faber, HK$330
Americans are fond of pointing out to their British cousins that each exploding July 4 firework symbolises the snapping of a redcoated soldier's neck, and by extension, this was the war the British empire resoundingly lost. The colonies' struggle for independence was long and bitter, and by no means clear cut.
Numerous histories have covered the events from Lexington Green in 1775 to the final surrender at Yorktown in 1781, but Mark Urban's Fusiliers is the first to consider them as a whole and from the simple perspective of the men aiming along the barrel of a British musket.
And what men they were! The Duke of Wellington was later to describe British soldiers as 'the scum of the Earth' and indeed many were forcibly enlisted by the press gang, or as a sentence for committing petty crime. Volunteers were little better, persuaded to take the king's shilling after being plied with drink by recruiting sergeants, or driven into uniform by hunger and poverty.
The phrase 'lions led by donkeys' originated during the first world war, but could be applied equally to the late 1800s when officers bought and sold their commissions, irrespective of leadership qualities or any merit, and received no formal training.