Deserters were actually furnished horses . . . and forwarded . . . from house to house till they were beyond the reach of pursuit

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 131.

But it remained for Cornwallis’s commander at Camden, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat Francis, Lord Rawdon, product of Harrow and Oxford, to provide the most vivid description of what the British faced, in his case among the Scotch Irish of the Waxhaws, and the frustration it engendered. In 1778 Sir Henry Clinton had raised a Tory regiment in Philadelphia. It was called the Volunteers of Ireland, and it was commanded by Lord Rawdon. In a letter of 5 December 1780 to Cornwallis, Rawdon recalled that “soon after your Lordship had first taken possession of Camden, you detached me to Waxhaw with my own regiment, thinking that as it was an Irish corps it would be received with the better temper by the settlers of that district, who were universally Irish and universally disaffected. My conduct towards the inhabitants, and the extraordinary regularity of the troops under my command, I must assert to have been such as ought to have conciliated their firmest attachment; yet I had the firmest proofs that the people who daily visited my camp, not only held constant correspondence with the Rebel militia then assembling at Charlotteburgh, and with those who were harrassing Lieut.-Colonel Turnbull’s detachment, but also used every artifice to debauch the minds of my soldiers and persuade them to desert from their colours. The encouragement they gave to the men, and the certain means of escape with which they furnished them, succeeded to a very alarming degree, and the rage of desertion was not stopped by our return to Camden.” Rawdon added that “I soon found . . . that I was betrayed on every side by the inhabitants. Several small detachments from me were attacked by persons who had the hour before been with them as friends in their camp,” and deserters were “actually furnished horses . . . and forwarded . . . from house to house till they were beyond the reach of pursuit.” What Lord Rawdon experienced is the nightmare that professional soldiers face when guerrillas wage unrelenting war in pursuit of a cause the professionals do not understand. And it is clear that Rawdon did not understand. He thought that proper conduct by him and his troops would lead to conciliation. That this did not occur amounted to betrayal in his eyes.