The sun has barely dropped below the South Carolina hills and already the night is turning
frosty.
Icy cold mud sucks and pulls at the boots of one hundred British redcoats as they struggle
to set up camp for the night.
Each man is miserable, shivering even through his thick wool coat, and not looking forward
to spending another night in the muck and stink of the South Carolina swamp lands.
It's bad enough that the American colonists have rebelled against the crown, and dared
to challenge the most powerful empire in history for their independence.
If it wasn't for the damned French and the ever-pestering Spanish back in Europe, this
rebellion would have been put down in months- the full might of the British empire descending
on the rebel colonies, like a stern parent disciplining a misbehaving child.
The gumption of these colonists to complain and rebel, while the rest of the Empire accepts
its burden for the glory of the crown!
To make matters worse, the rebel colonists have refused to wage war like gentlemen, no
doubt fully aware that they could never match the discipline, training, and gallantry of
proper British fighting men.
Instead the Americans strike out unexpectedly, using militia forces to lure British regulars
into what they believe will be a stand-up battle, only to be ambushed and bushwacked
by American irregulars from their rear.
The Americans fight like savages, no better than the natives... or the French for that
matter.
This war is proving to be particularly troublesome, and especially unpleasant.
As the British redcoats set up their camp, the weary men establish a rotation of sentries.
The swamp is dark, and the knee-high water freezing- none of the sentries or the officers
in command seriously believe they are in danger of attack here, but one must always be dutiful.
The sentries are tired after days of trudging through these swamps, seeking out a rumored
force of Americans hiding out here, men led by a general whom has earned himself the name
of 'the Swamp Fox' for his disgraceful hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, and general bushwackery.
The Swamp Fox has savaged British supply lines for weeks, and taken much plunder and booty,
helping to keep the regular colonial militias armed and supplied, while denying those same
critical supplies for British forces.
A short distance from the camp, a pair of eyes watches the British sentries as they
struggle to keep awake and warm in the cold night.
The muddy waters are icy, the temperature hovering just above freezing, but none of
this fazes Francis Marion, the man known to his adversaries as the Swamp Fox.
His face has been blackened with charcoal, and his military uniform dulled with mud and
stained through with green and brown pigments.
Behind him in the dark, two dozen other men dressed similarly wait silently.
They've learned to strike when least expected, to allow the British to lull themselves into
a false sense of security.
Nobody, and certainly no proper British-trained officer, would ever expect an attack in the
wee hours of the night.
And certainly not from an enemy willing to silently cross through miles of freezing cold
swampland in the pitch black.
For hours Marion and his men wait, each bearing the extreme cold and discomfort stoically,
never once muttering as much as a single complaint.
Finally, after the change of the second watch, Marion looks over his shoulder and nods silently
at his second in command.
It's time- the second watch will be headed to their bedrolls, most of the camp will be
in the midst of fitful sleep, and the third watch sentries struggling to wake themselves
up while longing for the minor comforts of their tents.
With silent hand and arm signals, Marion commands his men to spread out in a skirmish line.
They slowly approach the British camp, their stained and darkened tunics making each man
nothing more than a shadowy apparition in the moonless night.
The British sentries, no doubt secure in their belief that no madman would dare launch an
offensive against such a large unit through such terrible terrain, don't suspect a thing.
Now within a few dozen yards, Marion lets out another hand signal and the skirmish line
freezes.
Several men slowly make their way forward- these are Marion's sharpshooters, hand-picked
as the finest shots in his small command of irregulars.
Moments of silence hang heavy in the dark swamp, broken only by the splintering of logs
from the roaring British fires- then, with a nod, the sharpshooters open fire.
Four sentries are immediately downed, two men each targeting the same sentry to ensure
a swift kill.
Despite the sharp cracks of rifles, the rest of the British camp is in disbelief for a
few moments.
Marion and his men charge forward- though not a single battlecry escapes their lips.
The men are silent wraiths descending on a slowly waking British camp, hellbent on death
and destruction.
A few moments later alarmed shouts ring out, realization dawning on the British force.
Men struggle to rise from their bedrolls and pick up rifles, as Marion and his raiders
breach the perimeter.
Torches are quickly lit and tossed at canvas tents, other men pick up blazing logs from
the British's own fires and set more tents ablaze.
In moments roaring fires begin to spread across the camp.
The roar of rifles overtakes the camp, Marion himself felling a British lieutenant as he
exited his tent.
The colonists are vastly outnumbered and outgunned in this fight for independence, and have found
that killing officers- something utterly unimaginable on a European battlefield- has helped to level
the odds by sewing confusion and chaos amongst the British ranks.
Now British officers are primary targets, and quickly becoming an endangered species
on the American continent.
His rifle spent, Marion slings it across his shoulder and grabs a pistol at his belt, dropping
yet another British soldier exiting his tent.
Marions' men follow suit, firing rifles, then switching to pistols, and finally, each man
unsheathe their own personal close-quarters weapon.
Some of the raiders carry Indian tomahawks, other large knives and axes.
Marion carries a saber, lifted from the corpse of a slain British officer.
In the close-quarters of the British camp, the combat very quickly becomes hand-to-hand.
The British are in complete disarray, even as surviving officers struggle to get a handle
on the situation.
The surprise attack has caught the British unit completely off guard, they simply do
not teach night time swamp ambushes- or how to react to one- in the officer schools of
the British empire.
Yet the British forces vastly outnumber this small band of raiders, and if the men can
be rallied then the attack can be repelled.
A British officer lifts himself up on to his horse, calling out above the din of the hand-to-hand
slaughter- atop his horse he is a visible beacon for the British forces to rally around,
and the added stature grants him authority that helps combat the panic spreading through
the British troops.
It also makes him a very easy target.
A single sharp crack sounds from the swamp a few dozen yards outside the camp.
The British officer falls from his horse.
Ringing the camp, Marion has stationed individual sharpshooters, who take their time loading
their muskets and carefully selecting targets of opportunity amidst the chaos.
The raid is bold, and the British have been taken completely by surprise- yet the two
dozen-strong raiding party is vastly outnumbered.
Marion ducks a wild stab from a young redcoat and dispatches the unfortunate recruit in
swift fashion.
Then, putting fingers to his lips, he lets out two sharp, loud whistles.
All around the camp, Marion's men immediately disengage from the fight, rushing back into
the dark swamps.
At first the British give chase, but the sharpshooters Marion has placed around the perimeter of
the camp drop red coats one by one.
Seeing their compatriots fall to invisible rifles in the pitch-black swamp, the rest
of the men second-guess their decision to give chase.
In moments, the swamp is silent again, Marion and his raiders are long gone.
The British rush to put out the fires consuming their tents and supplies, while others tend
to the wounded.
There aren't many wounded men, Marion's men brutally efficient in their hand-to-hand combat.
By the time dawn breaks, the British will count thirty two killed, ten wounded, with
seven dead American raiders.
Most of their supplies have been lost to the fires, and what wasn't consumed by flames
was stolen by a band of rebels that used the chaos of the raid as cover to plunder precious
supplies.
The British unit will be forced to turn back out of the swamps, regroup and resupply.
The British are by now utterly infuriated with the colonist rebel who has made the swamps
of South Carolina and adjacent states his hunting ground.
Colonel Banastre Tarleton has been dispatched from New York to hunt down Francis Marion,
and word has quickly reached the Americans thanks to an extensive network of rebel spies
and informants.
Tarleton is frustrated almost immediately upon arriving in South Carolina.
He is fully aware that the American Colonel is himself aware of Tarleton's arrival, and
his mission to seek him out and destroy him and his men- yet the British are themselves
all but blind to the movements of the Americans, or their intentions.
A small contingent of Loyalists feed the British information when possible, but this is nothing
compared to the sophisticated spy ring that the colonial rebels have established across
the east coast.
Not a single British unit can move without the American forces knowing size, composition,
and destination.
All of this is deeply frustrating for Tarleton, who is the closest that the British have to
a man who can match Marion's talents for irregular warfare.
A highly skilled cavalryman, Tarleton and his light cavalry forces are quick and can
maneuver through difficult terrain better than the British regulars.
His keen hunting instincts make him confident he can find the elusive American colonel causing
so much trouble for the crown.
Plunging into the swamps with a force of 150 men, Tarleton doesn't repeat the mistakes
of previous British forces.
He makes good use of scouts, sending men out ahead of his formation to seek out the trails
and passes through which the ghost-like Marion and his men move through the vast swamps.
He fails however to make use of scouts to secure his flanks, a mistake he'll only make
once as he and his men wander into a carefully planned ambush.
Marion and his men strike at both flanks of Tarleton's formation, taking the British colonel
by surprise.
A dozen or more men fall in the first volley, and the rest of Tarleton's company rushes
to find cover behind trees and fallen logs.
This is no gentleman's war, and far from the orderly formations of soldiers whom march
upon each other on declared fields of battle and take turns loosening volleys of fire against
one another.
This is the devil's own war, an ungentlemanly display of violent vulgarity- and Tarleton
is ill-prepared for it.
Marion, on the other hand, is a seasoned professional of this new type of war.
His men loose volleys in rapid succession, then after a predetermined number of firings
by each man, they begin to break away in pairs.
Two men slink back towards the safety of the swamp, as another pair loose a new volley
of fire at the British.
This ensures that any pursuit will be delayed as long as possible, the British regulars
hesitant to poke their heads up as long as the Americans are still firing.
Marion's men grew up on this land, hunting and trapping for a living- they are crack
shots to a man and know the terrain.
Marion and his forces break off the attack completely after only a few minutes.
His strategy is simple- rather than face the superior British forces outright and attempt
to destroy them, he is content to simply bleed them dry one skirmish at a time.
The tactic is incredibly effective, and Marion's lighting raids are serving to destroy the
morale of the British regulars and tie down sizable amounts of forces as the British attempt
to secure their supply lines and rear areas.
This in turn means less redcoats for the Colonial militias to face- and that's good, because
the war has been largely disastrous for the Colonists.
The British have handed the rebels defeat after crushing defeat, and American victories
are few and far in between.
Yet the British are definitely losing this war, and Tarleton grits his teeth in barely
contained rage.
Marion and his irregular tactics are only highlighting a crippling problem for the British
forces- their supply lines stretch across the Atlantic to Britain and beyond, and every
loss of men and material weakens all British forces on the continent.
Marion and his raids are having a far more disastrous effects on the British efforts
than even he realizes.
To make matters worse, the damned American is proving impossible to corner.
Raid after raid, Marion and his men break off from Tarleton's forces, slinking back
into the swamp.
They retreat into the deepest parts of the swamp, where pursuit by even Tarelton's cavalry
is impossible.
He's already lost six horses to the treacherous terrain, and two dozen to the constant raids.
Tarleton yearns for a stand-up fight, to corner this damned swamp fox and cut off all possibility
of retreat.
If he could manage such a feat, he would handily defeat Marion and his forces, ending the scourge
once and for all.
For weeks the two men play a game of cat and mouse across the deep swamps of the Carolinas.
The rest of the war is all but forgotten for the two commanders and their soldiers, the
two sides now locked in a very personal and private war all their own.
Tarleton proves himself to be a brilliant tactician, and very fast to adapt his tactics-
but Marion is the keener mind here.
He has pioneered a new type of war, and proven very adept in its execution.
Bled of men and supplies and frustrated in every attempt, Tarleton is forced to retreat.
His men are bloodied and demoralized, food and other vital stocks are running low.
What hasn't been used up has been victimized by Marion and his damned raiders time and
again.
For his part, the swamp fox has proven as elusive as his namesake, and managed to evade
Tarleton time and again.
The duel is over, Tarleton grudgingly admitting defeat.
Both sides have bled and suffered in their private war, but Marion and his raiders have
proven the superior.
Now the two brilliant and gifted commanders will return to the war at large, but only
one of them will be remembered by history.
The American revolutionary war will end shortly after the swamp duels with victory of the
colonists, due in no small part to their French allies.
Marion will retire from military command to serve as a politician, but his real legacy
will be in the lessons he forged at the dawn of a new age of warfare.
Two centuries later, Marion's expertise in irregular warfare will serve to heavily influence
American special forces, with the United States Army's Rangers considering him their founding
father.
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