About three in the morning of the 17th of January, Tarleton called in his sentries and ordered his drummers to rouse his men. Leaving 35 baggage wagons and 70 Negro slaves with a 100-man guard commanded by a lieutenant, he marched his sleepy men down the rutted Green River Road, the same route Morgan had followed the previous day. The British found the marching hard in the dark. The ground, Tarleton later wrote, was “broken, and much intersected by creeks and ravines.” Ahead of the column and on both flanks scouts prowled the woods to prevent an ambush. Describing the march, Tarleton also gave a precise description of his army. Three companies of light infantry, supported by the infantry of the British Legion, formed his vanguard. The light infantry were all crack troops, most of whom had been fighting in America since the beginning of the war. One company was from the 16th Regiment and had participated in some of the swift, surprise attacks for which light infantry was designed. They had been part of the British force that killed and wounded 150 Americans in a night assault at Paoli, Pa., in the fall of 1777. The light company of the 71st Regiment had a similar record, having also been part of the light infantry brigade that the British organized early in the war. [Illustration: Music made the soldier’s life more tolerable on the march and in camp. But the most important use was in battle. Both the drum and the fife conveyed signals and orders over the din and confusion far better than the human voice. This iron fife is an original 18th-century instrument. The drum, according to tradition, was carried in the war.] With these regulars marched another company of light infantry whose memories were not so grand—the green-coated men of the Prince of Wales Loyal American Volunteers. Northern loyalists, they had been in the war since 1777. They had seen little fighting until they sailed south in 1780. After the fall of Charleston, Cornwallis had divided them into detachments and used them to garrison small posts, with disastrous results. In August 1780 at Hanging Rock, Sumter had attacked one detachment, virtually annihilating it. The colonel of the regiment was cashiered for cowardice. Another detachment was mauled by Francis Marion at Great Savannah around the same time. It was hardly a brilliant record. But this company of light infantry, supposedly the boldest and best of the regiment, might be eager to seek revenge for their lost comrades. Tarleton’s Legion