but I think we both know you're not going to be able to produce that. I must admit I'm fascinated by the behavior of people who clearly know nothing about a given historical situation yet persist in arguing for whatever cherished mythology they've received. Although I must admit that something in the tone of your writing makes me suspect that perhaps you don't really believe what you're writing and are just enjoying the argument. At any rate, please permit me to address your comments below.
>>"after every beating a core of patriots would always come back to face the enemy again" is moist eyed sentimentalism that is more at home in a Hollywood propaganda film, yet you state it as fact.It
was a fact. Washington's army continued to exist and return to the field after the defeats at Bunker Hill (although Washington didn't command it then), Long Island, Brandywine, Germantown, and Newport. It held together through six years of fighting till the end of the war, despite being beaten most of the time. If this is wrong, show how. I mean really show how -- lyrical comments about moist eyed propaganda movies, while pretty (you write quite well) -- are not valid historical evidence.
>>You talk of "...exhausted and dispirited remnants" "...singlehandedly" "..revitalising..." the cause with "...astounding..." victories. This is again misleading, historically inaccurate, and blatant chest thumping propaganda and myth making.Washington's victories at Trenton and Princeton caused the British to evacuate the entire state of New Jersey. If you really knew anything about the condition of American affairs in the winter of 1776, or the state of Washington's army following the defeats in New York, or the effect the American victories at Trenton and Princeton produced on the strategic situation in the east, you wouldn't have embarrassed yourself with such a silly statement. But don't take my word for it, here is concise commentary by an
Englishman:
"The effect of the battle of Trenton was out of all proportion to the numbers involved and the casualties. The American effort across the colonies was galvanized and the psychological dominance achieved by the British in the preceding year overturned. Howe was stunned that a strong German contingent could be surprised in such a manner and put up so little resistance. Washington’s constant problem was to maintain the enthusiasm of his army for the war, particularly with the system of one year recruitment and Trenton proved a much needed encouragement."
Excerpted from:
http://www.britishbattles.com/battle-trenton.htm>>The "mighty British army" in North America was made up of Hessians and other ill trained mercenaries. The bulk and cream of the British army was in the East, in India or China, in Africa, or fighting other European armies. Of course the British used mercenaries - 30,000 German troops in North America, although only about half were actually Hessians. But your blanket statement that they comprised the whole of the British forces is fallacious. Your blanket statement that mercenary troops were ill-trained is fallacious. And your assertion that the cream of the British army was elsewhere is contradicted by the historical presence in America of elite units like the Coldstream Guards and the Black Watch.
I find it interesting that you didn't comment on the poor quality of the British troops until you realized that the French weren't the ones fighting them.
>>The British withdrew from North America because it was not worth the trouble to stay there. Not because of some mighty God-driven patriot army and revolution.... America at the time had little to offer to offset the expense of containing a troublesome rebellion.Here you yourself explicitly admit that the British left because of "a troublesome rebellion", while at the same time making the curious and completely contradictory statement that the troublesome rebellion had absolutely nothing to do with it. Utter nonsense! You understand perfectly well, as you yourself inadvertently let slip here, that the continued resistance of the American Patriots, Insurgent, Rebels, Terrorists, or whatever you want to call them, was indeed a vital factor in forcing the British out.
And in the final analysis, excuses after the fact really don't matter much, do they? It really doesn't matter if the British considered the West Indies to be more valuable than the North American continent. It really doesn't matter if the Revolution eventually expanded into a global war. You can try to fabricate any excuse for it that you like, but at the end of the day all that matters is that
the British had six years to put those people down, and they couldn't do it. They left. They were
beaten.
Let me rephrase your argument in terms that I think will allow you to grasp its fallaciousness:
The Vietnamese deserve no credit for defeating the United States. The Russians and/or Chinese do. Legends about the tenacity of the Viet Cong are nothing but misty-eyed Communist propaganda, yet some people assert them as fact. In fact the Viet Cong did not even really fight, at least not very much and not very hard, although the patriotic fervor of those who want to believe they did is understandable. To assert that the Tet Offensive marked a turning point in the war is to deal in populism and legend rather than fact and reality.
Furthermore, the American military really didn't have much of an edge over rice paddy peasants because most US soldiers were draftees with bad morale. The good troops were in Germany. So it's not surprising that the US couldn't beat the Viet Cong, even though the Viet Cong really didn't do anything of any consequence except get the Russians and/or Chinese to pull their asses out of the fire.
The US was not beaten, but decided to leave because of the unpopularity of the war at home. If the US had really wanted to win that war, it would have.