Tarleton again distinguished himself when the British army retreated from Philadelphia to New York in June 1778. At Monmouth Court House he began the battle by charging the American advance column and throwing it into confusion. In New York, sorting out his troops, the new British commander, Sir Henry Clinton, rewarded Tarleton with another promotion. While the British were in Philadelphia, various loyalists had recruited three troops of dragoons. In New York, officers—some loyalist, some British—recruited companies of infantry and more troops of dragoons from different segments of the loyalist population. One company was Scottish, two others English, a third American-born. Clinton combined these fragments into a 550-man unit that he christened the British Legion. Half cavalry, half infantry, a legion was designed to operate on the fringe of a main army as a quick-strike force. Banastre Tarleton was given command of the British Legion, which was issued green coats and tan breeches, unlike other loyalist regiments, who wore red coats with green facings. Banastre Tarleton, Gentleman [Illustration: Banastre Tarleton] Banastre Tarleton, only 26, was a short, thick-set, rather handsome redhead who was tireless and fearless in battle. Unlike Morgan, he had been born to privilege. Scion of a wealthy Liverpool mercantile family, he was Oxford educated and might have become a barrister except that he preferred the playing field to the classroom and the delights of London theatres and coffee houses to the study of law. After squandering a modest inheritance, he jumped at the chance to buy a commission in the King’s Dragoons and serve in America. Eventually he came into command of the British Legion, a mounted and foot unit raised among American loyalists. Marked by their distinctive green uniforms, they soon became known as Tarleton’s Green Horse. It was their ruthless ferocity that earned Tarleton the epithet, “Bloody Tarleton.” After the war, Tarleton fell in love with the beautiful Mary Robinson, a poet, playwright, and actress. Tarleton’s memoir, _The Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces_, owes much to her gifted pen. [Illustration: Mary Robinson] [Illustration: Tarleton’s birthplace on Water Street in Liverpool.] [Illustration: Under Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, the patriots suffered their worst defeat of the war. Bottled up by Sir Henry Clinton in the peninsula city of Charleston, he surrendered the entire Continental Army in the South—more than 5,000 men—in May 1780.]