American Revolutionary War

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Pre 1900 Military

Clockwise from top left: Battle of Bunker Hill, Death of Montgomery at Quebec, Battle of Cowpens, "Moonlight Battle"

Date	1775–1783
Location	Primarily eastern North America and at sea
Result	Treaty of Paris (1783)
Casus belli	Taxation without representation; threats to traditional rights; republican ideology.
Territorial changes	Britain recognizes independence of the United States, cedes East Florida, West Florida, and Minorca to Spain and Tobago to France

Combatants

American Revolutionaries

France

The Netherlands

Spain
American Indians

Great Britain

German mercenaries
Loyalists
American Indians
Canadian Indians

Commanders

George Washington

Marquis de Lafayette

Comte de Rochambeau

Nathanael Greene

Bernardo de Gálvez

Sir William Howe

Sir Henry Clinton

Lord Cornwallis

( more commanders)

Campaigns and theaters
Boston – Canadian – New York and New Jersey – Saratoga – Philadelphia – Western – Sullivan Expedition – Southern – West Indies and Gulf Coast – Naval

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence, was the military side of the American Revolution, a colonial struggle against political and economic policies of the British Empire. From 1775 to 1778 it was a war between Great Britain and the thirteen British colonies, which declared their independence as the United States of America in 1776. In 1778 the war became a global conflict, involving the British also fighting the French, Spanish and Dutch empires. The French government, army and navy played critical roles. Native Americans fought on both sides of the conflict but most supported Britain. The main result was independence for the United States. The conflict stands as one of the few colonial wars that Great Britain has lost.

Throughout the war, the British were able to use their naval superiority to capture and occupy a few coastal cities, but control of the countryside (where most of the population lived) largely eluded them. General George Washington built a new American army from scratch and made effective use of short-term militia volunteers as well. After a decisive American victory at Saratoga that turned the tide in 1777, France, with Spain and the Netherlands as its allies, entered the war against Great Britain. A French naval victory in the Chesapeake allowed Washington to trap the main British army at Yorktown in 1781. Its surrender effectively ended the land war. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 recognized the independence of the United States.

Combatants before 1778

Armies, militias, and mercenaries

Americans

The Patriots (called also the "rebels", "Congress Men," "Whigs" or "Americans") had the active support of about 40 to 45 percent of the population. About 15 to 20 percent supported the British Crown during the war and were known as Loyalists (known also as "King's Men" or "Tories"). Loyalists fielded perhaps 50,000 men during the war compared to 250,000 patriots.

When the war began, the Americans did not have a regular army (also known as a " standing army"). Each colony had traditionally provided for its own defenses through the use of local militia. Militiamen who served for only a few weeks or months at a time, were reluctant to go very far from home, and were thus generally unavailable for extended operations. Militia lacked the training and discipline of regular soldiers but were occasionally effective against regular troops. American militia in the South were adept at partisan warfare and were particularly effective at suppressing Loyalist activity when British regulars were not in the area.

German troops serving with the British in North America. (C. Ziegler after Conrad Gessner, 1799)

Seeking to coordinate military efforts, the Continental Congress established a regular army—the Continental Army—in June 1775, and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress, and Washington reluctantly augmented the regular troops with militia throughout the war. Although as many as 250,000 men may have served as regulars or as militiamen for the Revolutionary cause in the eight years of the war, there were never more than 90,000 total men under arms for the Americans in any given year. Armies in North America were small by European standards of the era; the greatest number of men that Washington personally commanded in the field at any one time was fewer than 17,000.

British

Early in 1775, the British Army consisted of about 36,000 men worldwide, but wartime recruitment steadily increased this number. Additionally, over the course of the war the British hired about 30,000 German mercenaries, popularly known in the colonies as " Hessians" because many of them came from Hesse-Kassel. Germans made up about one-third of the British troop strength in North America. By 1779, the number of British and German troops stationed in North America was over 60,000, though these were spread over a vast area from Canada to Florida, and most were assigned to non-combat garrison duty, such as the 16,000 in New York City. Conway (1999) argues that in 1775 the British Royal Navy had less than 16,000 seamen and the army totaled about 36,000 troops. During the first three years of conflict, growth in these forces was slow because Lord North wanted to avoid provoking France and creating large increases in expenditures. With French intervention in 1778, serious expansion of the military began. By 1782, the navy had 100,000 seamen and marines. The creation of the new corps, which the king had previously opposed, expanded the army. The possibility of a French invasion led to rapid expansion of militia units in Britain. While exact figures are not available, it is possible that about 500,000 men were under arms during the course of the war. Though the aristocracy and gentry dominated the higher ranks in both army and navy, officers and men were drawn from a variety of social groups. In size and composition, this mobilization foreshadowed what was to come during the wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

Blacks and Native Americans

This 1780 drawing of American soldiers from the Yorktown campaign shows a black infantryman from the First Rhode Island Regiment.

Blacks served on in the Patriot cause. Black soldiers served in northern militias from the outset, but this was forbidden in the South, where slave owners feared arming slaves. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation promising freedom to runaway slaves of Patriot owners who fought for the British; Sir Henry Clinton issued a similar edict in New York in 1779. Tens of thousands of blacks escaped to the British lines; fewer than 1,000 served under arms. Many of the rest served as orderlies, mechanics, laborers, servants, scouts and guides. More than half died in smallpox epidemics that swept the British forces and many were driven out of the British lines when food ran low. Despite Dunmore's promises, the majority were not given their freedom.

Because of manpower shortages, Washington lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army in January 1776. All-black units were formed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; many were slaves promised freedom for serving. Another all-black unit came from Haiti with French forces. At least 5,000 black soldiers fought for the Revolutionary cause.

Most American Indians east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war; most joined the British side. An estimated 13,000 warriors fought on the British side; the largest group, the Iroquois Confederacy, fielded about 1,500 men.

War in the north, 1775–1779

Massachusetts

Before the war, Boston, Massachusetts, had been the scene of much revolutionary activity, leading to the effective abolition of the provincial government of Massachusetts by the British parliament in 1774. Popular resistance to these measures, however, compelled the newly appointed royal officials in Massachusetts to resign or to seek refuge in Boston. Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, the British Commander-in-Chief, North America, commanded four regiments of British regulars (about 4,000 men) from his headquarters in Boston, but the countryside was in the hands of the Revolutionaries.

The British marching to Concord in April 1775

On the night of April 18, 1775, General Gage sent 700 men to seize munitions stored by the colonial militia at Concord, Massachusetts. Riders alerted the countryside ( Paul Revere was one of them), and when the British troops entered Lexington on the morning of April 19, they found 77 minutemen formed up on the village common. Shots were exchanged, and the British moved on to Concord, where there was more fighting. By the time the British struggled to return, thousands of militiamen had arrived on the scene; a rescue mission finally escorted the survivors to Boston. The British suffered 39% casualties, the Americans 2%. The British had lost the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the war had begun.

From all over New England militia units converged on Boston, bottling up the British in the city. About 4,500 more British soldiers arrived by sea, and on June 17, 1775, British forces under General William Howe seized the Charlestown peninsula at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British assumed the Americans would quickly break and run in the face of a determined attack. The British lost 42% of their assault troops, with 228 dead and 826 wounded, their heaviest losses of the war. The siege was not broken, and Gage was soon replaced by Howe as the British commander-in-chief.

In July 1775, newly appointed General Washington arrived outside Boston to take charge of the colonial forces and to organize the Continental Army. The standoff continued throughout the fall and winter. In early March 1776, heavy cannon that the Patriots had captured at Fort Ticonderoga were placed on Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston harbour. With cannons directly aimed at his ships, Howe was checkmated , and the British evacuated the city on March 17, 1776, sailing for temporary refuge at the Royal Navy's base at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Washington then took most of the Continental Army to fortify New York City.

New York and New Jersey

Having withdrawn his army from Boston, General Howe now focused on capturing New York City. To defend the city, General Washington divided his 20,000 soldiers between Long Island and Manhattan. While British troops were assembling on Staten Island for the campaign, Washington had the newly issued Declaration of American Independence read to his men. On August 27, 1776, after landing about 22,000 men on Long Island, the British drove the Americans back to Brooklyn Heights. Howe then laid siege to fortifications there, but Washington managed to evacuate his army to Manhattan.

On September 15, Howe landed about 12,000 men on lower Manhattan, quickly taking control of New York City. The Americans withdrew to Harlem Heights, where they skirmished the next day but held their ground. When Howe moved to encircle Washington's army in October, the Americans again fell back, and a battle at White Plains was fought on October 28, 1776. Once more Washington retreated, and Howe returned to Manhattan and captured Fort Washington in mid November, taking about 2,000 prisoners (with an additional 1,000 having been captured during the battle for Long Island).

Emanuel Leutze's stylized depiction of Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) is an iconic image

General Lord Cornwallis continued to chase Washington's army through New Jersey, until the Americans withdrew across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania in early December. With the campaign at an apparent conclusion for the season, the British entered winter quarters. Although Howe had missed several opportunities to crush the diminishing rebel army, he had killed or captured over 5,000 Americans and was in a good position to resume operations in the spring, with the rebel capital of Philadelphia in striking distance.

The outlook of the Continental Army was bleak. "These are the times that try men's souls," wrote Thomas Paine, who was with the army on the retreat. The army had dwindled to fewer than 5,000 men fit for duty, and would be reduced to 1,400 after enlistments expired at the end of the year. Congress had abandoned Philadelphia in despair, although popular resistance to British occupation was growing in the countryside.

Washington decided to take the offensive, stealthily crossing the Delaware on Christmas night and capturing nearly 1,000 Hessians at the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776. Cornwallis marched to retake Trenton but was outmaneuvered by Washington, who successfully attacked the British rearguard at Princeton on January 3, 1777. Washington then entered winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, having given a morale boost to the American cause. New Jersey militia continued to harass British and Hessian forces throughout the winter.

Saratoga and Philadelphia

When the British began to plan operations for 1777, they had two main armies in North America: Carleton's army in Canada, and Howe's army in New York. In London, Lord George Germain approved campaigns for these armies which, because of miscommunication, poor planning, and rivalries between commanders, did not work in conjunction. Although Howe successfully captured Philadelphia, the northern army was lost in a disastrous surrender at Saratoga. Both Carleton and Howe resigned after the 1777 campaign.

Saratoga campaign

The first of the 1777 campaigns was an expedition from Canada led by General John Burgoyne. The goal was to seize the Lake Champlain and Hudson River corridor, effectively isolating New England from the rest of the American colonies. Burgoyne's invasion had two components: he would lead about 10,000 men along Lake Champlain towards Albany, New York, while a second column of about 2,000 men, led by Barry St. Leger, would move down the Mohawk River valley and link up with Burgoyne in [Albany.

Mohawk leader Joseph Brant led both Indians and Loyalists in battle.

Burgoyne set off in June, and recaptured Fort Ticonderoga in early July. Thereafter, his march was slowed by Americans who felled trees in his path. A Hessian detachment was sent to Vermont to seize cattle but was decisively defeated by American militia in August; Burgoyne lost nearly 1,000 men, and the Americans realized they could defeat the invaders, as thousands of New England militia joined the campaign.

Meanwhile, St. Leger—half of his force American Indians led by Joseph Brant—had laid siege to Fort Stanwix. American militiamen and their Indian allies marched to relieve the siege but were ambushed and scattered at the Battle of Oriskany on August 6. When a second relief expedition approached, this time led by Benedict Arnold, the pro-British Indians fled, St. Leger broke off the siege and returned to Canada.

Burgoyne's army was now reduced to about 6,000 men. Instead of retreating to Canada he determined to push on towards Albany, assuming Howe's troops from New York City would meet him there. An American army of 8,000 men, commanded by the General Horatio Gates, had entrenched about 10 miles (16 km) south of Saratoga, New York. Burgoyne tried to outflank the Americans but was checked at the first battle of Saratoga in September. Burgoyne's situation was desperate, but he now hoped that help from Howe's army in New York City might be on the way. It was not: Howe had instead sailed away on an expedition to capture Philadelphia. American militiamen flocked to Gates's army, swelling his force to 11,000 by the beginning of October. After being badly beaten at the second battle of Saratoga, Burgoyne surrendered on October 17.

Saratoga was the turning point of the war. Revolutionary confidence and determination was renewed. More importantly, the victory encouraged France to enter the war against Great Britain. For the British, the war had now become much more complicated.

Philadelphia campaign

Meanwhile, having secured New York City in 1776, in 1777, General Howe concentrated on capturing Philadelphia, the seat of the Revolutionary government. He moved slowly, landing 15,000 troops in late August at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay. Washington positioned his 11,000 men between Howe and Philadelphia but was driven back at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. The Continental Congress once again abandoned Philadelphia, and on September 26, Howe finally outmaneuvered Washington and marched into the city unopposed. Washington unsuccessfully attacked the British encampment in nearby Germantown in early October and then retreated to watch and wait.

Washington and Lafayette look over the troops at Valley Forge.

After repelling a British attack at White Marsh, Washington and his army encamped at Valley Forge in December 1777, about 20 miles (32 km) from Philadelphia, where they stayed for the next six months. Over the winter, 2,500 men (out of 10,000) died from disease and exposure. The next spring, however, the army emerged from Valley Forge in good order, thanks in part to the elaborate training program run by Baron von Steuben, a former member of the Prussian general staff

Meanwhile, there was a shakeup in the British command, with General Clinton replacing Howe as commander-in-chief. French entry into the war had changed British strategy, and Clinton abandoned Philadelphia in order to reinforce New York City, now vulnerable to French naval power. Washington shadowed Clinton on his withdrawal and forced a battle at Monmouth on June 28, 1778, the last major battle in the north. Clinton's army escaped to New York City in July, just before a French fleet under Admiral d'Estaing arrived off the American coast. Washington's army returned to White Plains, New York. Although both armies were back where they had been two years earlier, the nature of the war had now changed.

An international war, 1778–1783

In 1778, the colonial rebellion in North America became an international war. After learning of the American victory at Saratoga, France signed the Treaty of Alliance with the United States on February 6, 1778. Spain entered the war as an ally of France in June 1779. The Netherlands also became a combatant in 1780. All three countries had quietly provided financial assistance to the American rebels since the beginning of the war, hoping to dilute British power.

Widening of the naval war

When the war began, the British had overwhelming naval superiority over the American colonists. The Royal Navy had over 100 powerful ships of the line. During the first three years of the war, the Royal Navy was primarily used to blockade the American coast, to transport troops and supplies, and to protect commercial shipping. The American colonists had no ships of the line, and relied extensively on privateering to harass British shipping. The Continental Congress authorized the creation of a small Continental Navy on October 13, 1775, which was primarily used for commerce raiding. John Paul Jones became the first well-known American naval hero, capturing HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters.

"The Siege and Relief of Gibraltar", 13 September 1782, by John Singleton Copley.

French entry into the war meant that British naval superiority was now contested. The Franco-American alliance began poorly, however, with failed operations at Rhode Island in 1778 and Savannah, Georgia, in 1779. Part of the problem was that France and the United States had different military priorities: France hoped to capture British possessions in the West Indies before helping to secure American independence. While French financial assistance to the American war effort was already of critical importance, French military aid to the Americans would not show positive results until the arrival in July 1780 of an expeditionary force led by the Comte de Rochambeau.

Spain entered the war with the goal of invading England as well as recapturing Gibraltar and Minorca, which had been lost to the British in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The Franco-Spanish invasion of England never materialized. Gibraltar was besieged for more than three years, but the British garrison there was resupplied after Admiral Sir George Rodney's victory in the "Moonlight Battle" on 16 January 1780. Further Franco-Spanish efforts to capture Gibraltar were unsuccessful. On February 5, 1782, Spanish and French forces captured Minorca, which Spain retained after the war.

West Indies and Gulf Coast

There was much action in the West Indies, with several islands changing hands, especially in the Lesser Antilles. Ultimately, at the Battle of the Saintes in April 1782, a decisive victory by Rodney's fleet over the French Admiral de Grasse dashed the hopes of France and Spain to take Jamaica and other colonies from the British. In May 1782, Spanish Count Bernardo de Gálvez captured the British naval base at New Providence in the Bahamas.

On the Gulf Coast, Gálvez seized three British Mississippi River outposts in 1779: Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez. Gálvez then captured Mobile in 1780 and forced the surrender of the British outpost at Pensacola in 1781. His actions led to Spain acquiring East and West Florida in the peace settlement.

India and the Netherlands

The Franco-British war spilled over into India in 1780, in the form of the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The two chief combatants were Tipu Sultan, ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore and a key French ally, and the British government of Madras. The Anglo-Mysore conflict was bloody but inconclusive and ended in a draw in 1784.

Also in 1780, the British struck against the United Provinces of the Netherlands in order to preempt Dutch involvement in the League of Armed Neutrality, a declaration of several European powers that they would conduct neutral trade during the war. Great Britain was not willing to allow the Netherlands to openly give aid to the American rebels. Agitation by Dutch radicals and a friendly attitude towards the United States by the Dutch government—both influenced by the American Revolution—also encouraged the British to attack. The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War lasted into 1784 and was disastrous to the Dutch mercantile economy.

Southern theatre

During the first three years of the American Revolutionary War, the primary military encounters were in the north. After French entry into the war, the British turned their attention to the southern colonies, where they hoped to regain control by recruiting Loyalists. This southern strategy also had the advantage of keeping the Royal Navy closer to the Caribbean, where the British needed to defend their possessions against the French and Spanish.

The young and dashing Banastre Tarleton was perhaps the best cavalry commander in the war—and the most hated man in the South. This portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1782.

On December 29, 1778, an expeditionary corps from Clinton's army in New York captured Savannah, Georgia. An attempt by French and American forces to retake Savannah failed on October 9, 1779. Clinton then besieged Charleston, capturing it on May 12, 1780. The Americans, including the pride of the Southern Continental Army, the 2nd South Carolina Regiment, held on to the town, for a lond period, but eventually were outnumbered by the vastly large British/Hessian invasion force. The British would not allow the American garrison to honorably evacuate, and made them prisoners of war. The Americans were not allowed to withdraw with an American tune, so they played the British 'Turk's March.' In time around the battle, strong American resistance occured in the modern suburbs of Charleston: John's Island, and West Ashley. If the commanding General, Benjamin Lincoln, had not overlooked the vulneralble west flank of the Charles Town peninsula, the British may have been prevented from invading the southern port, thus ending the war by defeating the British hopes of capturing the south. With relatively few casualties, Clinton had seized the South's biggest city and seaport, paving the way for what seemed like certain conquest of the South.

The remnants of the southern Continental Army began to withdraw to North Carolina but were pursued by Colonel Banastre Tarleton, who defeated them at the Waxhaws on May 29, 1780. With these events, organized American military activity in the region collapsed, though the war was carried on by partisans such as Francis Marion, former commandant of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment, previously mentioned. Cornwallis took over British operations, while Horatio Gates arrived to command the American effort. On August 16, 1780, Gates suffered one of the worst defeats in U.S. military history at the Battle of Camden, setting the stage for Cornwallis to invade North Carolina.

Cornwallis' victories quickly turned, however. One wing of his army was utterly defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780. Kings Mountain was noteworthy because it was not a battle between British redcoats and colonial troops; rather, it was a battle between Loyalist and Patriot militia. Tarleton’s troops were subsequently defeated at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, by American General Daniel Morgan.

General Nathanael Greene, Gates's replacement, proceeded to wear down the British in a series of battles, each of them tactically a victory for the British but giving no strategic advantage to the victors. Greene summed up his approach in a motto that would become famous: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Unable to capture or destroy Greene's army, Cornwallis moved north to Virginia.

In March 1781, General Washington dispatched General Lafayette to defend Virginia. The young Frenchman skirmished with Cornwallis, avoiding a decisive battle while gathering reinforcements. "The boy cannot escape me," Cornwallis is supposed to have said. However, Cornwallis was unable to trap Lafayette, and so he moved his forces to Yorktown, Virginia, in July in order to link up with the British navy.

West Floridan Theatre

In the present states of Mississippi and Alabama, frontier battles were occuring with the local Tory, and Indian populations, as well as the British occupation force.

Northern and western theatre

West of the Appalachian Mountains and along the Canadian border, the American Revolutionary War was an " Indian War." The British signed up most of the tribes as allies, although the Continental Congress warned them to stay neutral.

The British had a shortage of regular troops after Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga in 1777, and so a greater effort was made to recruit American Indians. The British supplied their native allies with muskets and gunpowder and advised raids against civilian villages, especially in New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania. Joint Iroquois-Loyalist attacks in the Wyoming Valley and at Cherry Valley in 1778 provoked Washington to send the Sullivan Expedition into western New York during the summer of 1779. There was little fighting as Sullivan systematically destroyed the Indians' winter food supplies, forcing them to flee permanently to British bases in Canada and the Niagara Falls area.

In the Ohio Country and the Illinois Country, the Virginia frontiersman George Rogers Clark attempted to neutralize British influence among the Ohio tribes by capturing the British outposts of Kaskaskia and Vincennes in the summer of 1778. When General Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, retook Vincennes, Clark returned in a surprise march in February 1779 and captured Hamilton himself.

However, a decisive victory in the West eluded the United States even as their fortunes had risen in the East. The low point on the frontier came in 1782 with the Gnadenhütten massacre, when Pennsylvania militiamen killed about a hundred civilians. In August 1782, in the last major encounter of the war, a force of 200 Kentucky militia was defeated at the Battle of Blue Licks.

Yorktown and the war's end

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown ( John Trumbull, 1797). On the right is the American flag, on the left is the white flag of the French monarchy. Despite the painting's title, Cornwallis (claiming illness) was not present and is not depicted. Washington is on horseback in the right background; because the British commander was absent, military protocol dictated that Washington have a subordinate—-in this case Benjamin Lincoln-—accept the surrender.

The northern, southern, and naval theaters of the war converged in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia. In early September, French naval forces defeated a British fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake, cutting off Cornwallis's supplies and transport. Washington hurriedly moved his troops from New York, and a combined Franco-American force of 17,000 men commenced the siege of Yorktown in early October. Cornwallis's position quickly became untenable, and he surrendered his army on October 19, 1781.

The surrender at Yorktown was not the end of the war: the British still had 30,000 troops in North America and still occupied New York, Charleston, and Savannah. Both sides continued to plan upcoming operations, and fighting continued on the western front, in the south, and at sea.

In London, however, political support for the war plummeted after Yorktown, causing Prime Minister Lord North to resign soon afterwards. In April 1782, the British House of Commons voted to end the war in America. Preliminary peace articles were signed in Paris on November 30, 1782, though the formal end of the war did not occur until the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, and the United States Congress ratified the treaty on January 14, 1784. The last British troops left New York City on November 25, 1783.

Great Britain negotiated the Paris peace treaty without consulting her Indian allies and ceded all American Indian territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River to the United States. Full of resentment, Native Americans reluctantly confirmed these land cessions with the United States in a series of treaties, but the fighting would be renewed in conflicts along the frontier in the coming years, the largest being the Northwest Indian War.

Casualties

The total loss of life resulting from the American Revolutionary War is unknown. As was typical in the wars of the era, disease claimed more lives than battle. The war took place during a massive North American smallpox epidemic, which probably killed more than 130,000 people. Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington's decision to have his troops inoculated may have been the commander-in-chief's most important strategic decision.

An estimated 25,000 American Revolutionaries died during active military service. About 8,000 of these deaths were in battle; the other 17,000 deaths were from disease, including about 8,000 who died while prisoners of war. The number of Revolutionaries seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000. The total American military casualty figure was therefore as high as 50,000.

About 171,000 seamen served for the British during the war; about 25 to 50 percent of them had been pressed into service. About 1,240 were killed in battle, while 18,500 died from disease. The greatest killer was scurvy, a disease known at the time to be easily preventable by issuing lemon juice to sailors, a step not taken by the Admiralty because of what historian Piers Mackesy characterized as "administrative apathy". About 42,000 British seamen deserted during the war.

Approximately 1,200 Germans were killed in action and 6,354 died from illness or accident. About 16,000 of the remaining German troops returned home, but roughly 5,500 remained in the United States after the war for various reasons, many eventually becoming American citizens. No reliable statistics exist for the number of casualties among other groups, including Loyalists, British regulars, American Indians, French and Spanish troops, and civilians.

Historical assessment

Historians have often sought to explain why Great Britain lost a war which few at the time expected them to lose. Britain had several military advantages at the outset: vastly superior naval power, a professional military by the standards of the day, and far greater financial resources. Furthermore, the Americans often faced shortages of military supplies and had a traditional distrust of central government and standing armies which made the maintenance of a national military force extremely difficult.

On the other hand, the British had significant military disadvantages. Distance was a major problem: most troops and supplies had to be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. The British usually had logistical problems whenever they operated away from port cities, while the Americans had local sources of manpower and food and were more familiar with (and acclimated to) the territory. Additionally, ocean travel meant that British communications were always about two months out of date: by the time British generals in America received their orders from London, the military situation had usually changed.

Suppressing a rebellion in America also posed other problems. Since the colonies covered a large area and had not been united before the war, there was no central area of strategic importance. In Europe, the capture of a capital often meant the end of a war; in America, when the British seized cities such as New York and Philadelphia, the war continued unabated. Furthermore, the large size of the colonies meant that the British lacked the manpower to control them by force. Once any area had been occupied, troops had to be kept there or the Revolutionaries would regain control, and these troops were thus unavailable for further offensive operations. The British had sufficient troops to defeat the Americans on the battlefield but not enough to simultaneously occupy the colonies. This manpower shortage became critical after French and Spanish entry into the war, because British troops had to be dispersed in several theaters, where previously they had been concentrated in America.

The British also had the difficult task of fighting the war while simultaneously retaining the allegiance of Loyalists. Loyalist support was important, since the goal of the war was to keep the colonies in the British Empire, but this imposed numerous military limitations. Early in the war, the Howe brothers served as peace commissioners while simultaneously conducting the war effort, a dual role which may have limited their effectiveness. Additionally, the British could have recruited more slaves and American Indians to fight the war, but this would have alienated many Loyalists, even more so than the controversial hiring of German mercenaries. The need to retain Loyalist allegiance also meant that the British were unable to use the harsh methods of suppressing rebellion they employed in Ireland and Scotland. Even with these limitations, many potentially neutral colonists were nonetheless driven into the ranks of the Revolutionaries because of the war.