Tarleton gave the Carolinas a foretaste of modern war. His Legion was a fast-moving, hard-hitting combat team, accounted the best in the British army at that stage of the war. Its specialty was relentless pursuit followed by all-out attack. In Tarleton’s hands, the Legion became a weapon of terror directed at civilian and soldier alike. As in modern war, this tactic spawned as much partisan resistance as fear and was ultimately self-defeating. The figures across these pages represent the main units of the cooly efficient battle machine that Tarleton led onto the field that winter day. [Illustration: 17th Dragoons • Private, 16th Light Infantry • Legion cavalry • Private, 7th Fusiliers • Royal Artillery • Private, 71st Highlanders] Behind the light infantry marched the first battalion of the Royal Fusiliers of the 7th Regiment. This was one of the oldest regiments in the British army, with a proud history that went back to 1685. Known as the “City of London” regiment, it had been in America since 1773. A detachment played a vital part in repulsing the December 31, 1775, attack on Quebec, which wrecked American plans to make Canada the 14th State. Among the 426 Americans captured was Daniel Morgan. Few if any of the men in Tarleton’s ranks had been in that fight. The 167-man battalion were all new recruits. When they arrived in Charleston early in December, the British commander there had described them to Cornwallis as “so bad, not above a third can possibly move with a regiment.” The British government was having problems recruiting men for America. It had never been easy to persuade Englishmen to join the army and endure its harsh discipline and low pay. Now, with the war in America growing more and more unpopular, army recruiters were scouring the jails and city slums. Cornwallis had decided to use these new recruits as garrison troops at Ninety Six. Tarleton, as we have seen earlier, had borrowed them for his pursuit. Although the 7th’s motto was _Nec aspera terrent_ (“hardships do not frighten us”), it must have been an unnerving experience for these men, little more than a month after a long, debilitating sea voyage, to find themselves deep in the backwoods of South Carolina, marching through the cold, wet darkness to their first battle. Undoubtedly worsening the Fusiliers’ morale was the low opinion their officers had of Banastre Tarleton. The commander of the regiment, Maj. Timothy Newmarsh, had stopped at a country house for the night about a week ago, during the early stage of the pursuit, and had not been discreet in voicing his fears for the safety of the expedition. He said he was certain they would be defeated, because almost every officer in the army detested Tarleton, who had been promoted over the heads of men who had been in the service before he was born.