Banastre tarleton and william tavington banastre

It is human nature to want to fit the past into tidy storybook patterns, to reduce it to tales with clear-cut morals populated by heroes and villains. But if we search into the history behind the idealized heroes of myth, legend and folklore, more often than not we find only flawed and ordinary individuals, struggling to survive the sweep of events.

King Richard III is commonly remembered as a monster, not because evidence supports his villainy but because the history of his reign was recorded by his enemies. Was Lucrezia Borgia a cold-hearted poisoner? Many people casually "know" that she was, yet history reveals a vastly gentler version of this much-maligned lady.

Banastre tarleton death

Years ago, in the pages of a novel set during the American Revolution, I stumbled across a less famous victim of the power of folklore: Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, Commandant of the British Legion. Nicknamed "the Green Dragoon" by his twentieth-century biographer 1 , Tarleton served under Lord Cornwallis during the Revolution's Southern Campaign, where his aggressive fighting style and gift for fluid, hit-and-run warfare earned him a dark place in local legend.

Predictably, he was presented as the novel's "villain," but I found him so entertaining that I was drawn to investigate the history behind the myths of "Bloody Ban. The young man who waited, buried and often forgotten in the pages of historical research, had little in common with the black-hearted villain immortalized in Revolutionary War myths as "the Butcher of the Carolinas.

He was a fearless and ferocious cavalry leader, capable of showing his enemies both chivalry and ruthlessness. Away from the battlefield, he was a witty, hyper-sociable little rogue who made friends by the carriageload.

Was william tavington a real person

After the war, that list of friends grew to include many of his former enemies such as the Duc de Lauzun , Lafayette , Thaddeus Kosciusko and possibly even Thomas Jefferson. While Tarleton was far from a saint, he was just as far from being a monster, and he deserves a better accounting than he is normally given by popular "history. As a fictional movie foe, Will Tavington is an utter delight, and I was blown away by the quality of Jason Isaacs' performance in the role.

Tavington, however, has virtually nothing in common with Banastre Tarleton! There are vague similarities between their names, they each show plenty of panache when leading a cavalry column, and they share a fondness for fluffy black hats.