Behind the Royal Fusiliers trudged a 200-man battalion of the 71st Scottish Highlanders (Fraser’s), who probably did not find the night march through the woods as forbidding as the city men of the Fusiliers. At least half were relatively new recruits who had arrived in America little more than a year ago. The rest were veterans who had been campaigning in the rebellious colonies since 1776. They had sailed south to help the British capture Georgia in 1778 and had fought well in one of the most devastating royal victories of the southern campaign, the rout of the Americans at Briar Creek, Ga., in early 1779. They were commanded by Maj. Archibald McArthur, a tough veteran who had served with the Scottish Brigade in the Dutch army, considered one of the finest groups of fighting men in Europe. Between the 71st and the 7th Regiments plodded some 18 blue-coated royal artillerymen, leading horses carrying two brass cannon and 60 rounds of round shot and case shot (also known as canister because each “case” was full of smaller bullet-size projectiles that scattered in flight). These light guns were considered an important innovation when they were introduced into the British army in 1775. Because they could be dismantled and carried on horses, they could be moved over rough terrain impassable to ordinary artillery with its cumbersome ammunition wagons. The two guns Tarleton had with him could also be fitted with shafts that enabled four men to carry them around a battlefield, if the ground was too muddy or rough for their carriages. With the shafts, they resembled grasshoppers, and this was what artillerymen, fond of nicknames for their guns, called them. The cannon added to Tarleton’s confidence. They could hurl a 3-pound round shot almost 1,000 yards. There was little likelihood that Morgan had any artillery with him. All the southern army’s artillery had been captured at Camden. These guns with Tarleton may have been two of the captured pieces, which had originally been captured from the British at Saratoga in 1777. John Eager Howard, Citizen-soldier [Illustration: John Eager Howard] Few field officers served the Continental Army with greater skill or devotion to duty than John Eager Howard. When the revolution broke out, he was 23, the son of a landed Maryland family, brought up in an atmosphere of ease and comfort. He saw his first hostile fire as a captain of militia at White Plains (1776). The next year, as a major in the regulars, he helped lead the 4th Maryland at Germantown. In the Southern Campaign of 1780-81, regiments he led fought with great courage at Camden, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Hobkirks Hill, and Eutaw Springs. Nathanael Greene considered Howard “as good an officer as the world affords.” After the war, ‘Light-Horse Harry’ Lee described Howard as “always to be found where the battle raged, pressing into close action to wrestle with fixed bayonet.”