Solo Campaign - The Poll - Know Your Candidate

Banastre Tarleton, circa 1790

This follows from an email I had from Ludovico, asking me who is this General Banister, and also from the Old Metal Detector’s last comment to the previous post, which rightly draws attention to the general confusion between the real Tarleton and the fictional Colonel Tavington (from The Patriot).

For anyone who really wants to know a little more about Tarleton, can I point you to a rather good, brief, pleasantly gossipy biographical note here. It hits on the main themes, the mixture of fact and legend in his reputation from the AWI, and his military isolation after he fell out with the Duke of York and Wellesley. In fact, BT appears to have fallen out with a great many people – he was an outspoken Whig, and the possessor of a sardonic and deadly wit. Anyone who invariably referred to Wellington as ‘The Sepoy General’ needed an element of – how would you say it? – bottle. His promotion to full General and his appointment as Governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1812 were worthless tokens for someone with his ability and experience

I fear that I misspelled his name – he was Banastre Tarleton. I was also guilty of prematurely giving Rowland Hill a knighthood. To preserve balance between the leading candidates, I had a brief look for an interesting bio for Hill, but am alarmed to see that, apart from his military career, his life seems to have been almost entirely free of anything interesting. Not to be defeated, I’m still working on it.

If you haven’t cast a vote in the poll on the right, I’d be very pleased if you would consider doing so. You won’t win a digital camera, but you might help the British Army to defeat the French in Spain and change history forever. That’s not an offer you get every day, is it?