54 Facts About Banastre Tarleton

General Sir Banastre Tarleton, 1st Baronet was a British military officer and politician.

Banastre Tarleton is best known as the lieutenant colonel leading the British Legion at the end of the American Revolutionary War.

Banastre Tarleton later served in Portugal and held commands in Ireland and England.

Banastre Tarleton served as a prominent Whig politician for 20 years.

Banastre Tarleton was interested in military matters and opposed abolition of the slave trade.

Banastre Tarleton was the third of seven children born to merchant John Tarleton and his wife.

Banastre Tarleton's father had prospered in the West Indian sugar trade and managed several slaving vessels.

Banastre Tarleton was further educated at Middle Temple, London, which, at that time, served as a college for the education of lawyers.

Banastre Tarleton squandered almost all of it in less than a year on gambling and women, mostly at the Cocoa Tree club in London.

Banastre Tarleton proved to be a gifted horseman and leader of troops.

Banastre Tarleton sailed with Lord Cornwallis as part of an expedition to capture the southern city of Charleston, South Carolina.

Banastre Tarleton later was used in an exchange of prisoners.

Major Banastre Tarleton was at the Battle of Brandywine and at other battles in the campaigns of 1777 and 1778.

Banastre Tarleton's account, published in 1787, said that his horse had been shot from under him.

Banastre Tarleton's soldiers, thinking him murdered while the Continentals were asking for quarter, were vengeful until they could be brought under control.

In contrast, Colonel Banastre Tarleton alienated the colonial citizens with arbitrary confiscations of cattle and food stocks.

Banastre Tarleton was able to escape capture by forcing Goudylock to serve as a guide.

Banastre Tarleton was trying to capture Governor Thomas Jefferson and members of the Virginia General Assembly.

Banastre Tarleton destroyed arms and munitions and succeeded in dispersing the Assembly.

Banastre Tarleton was unhorsed, and Lauzun's Legion drove the British within their lines before being ordered to withdraw by the Marquis de Choisy.

Banastre Tarleton returned to Britain on parole, finished with this war at the age of 27.

Banastre Tarleton returned to England a hero: a triumphant veteran wounded in his country's service.

Banastre Tarleton sat for portraits by three leading artists in London: Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Cosway.

Reynolds portrays Banastre Tarleton momentarily dismounted on a battlefield, with gun-smoke swirling behind him.

Banastre Tarleton's pose appears to be based on works by Rembrandt, Tintoretto and an ancient Roman sculpture of Hermes.

The pose disguises Banastre Tarleton's mutilated right hand, of which he lost two fingers to a musket ball at the Battle of Guilford Court House.

Banastre Tarleton was the only artist ever appointed official painter to the Prince of Wales.

Some good quality engravings of Banastre Tarleton exist, having met the popular interest in him.

Banastre Tarleton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Cowpens for which he blamed Tarleton.

Banastre Tarleton became a focus of the controversy due to the loss of the light infantry at Cowpens.

Banastre Tarleton defended himself in response to their publications and Mackenzie's vendetta.

Banastre Tarleton continued to serve in the British Army and was promoted to colonel on 22 November 1790, to major-general on 4 October 1794 and to lieutenant-general on 1 January 1801.

Whilst on service in Portugal, Banastre Tarleton succeeded William Henry Vane, 3rd Earl of Darlington as colonel of the Princess of Wales's Fencible Dragoons in 1799.

Banastre Tarleton was appointed colonel of the 21st Light Dragoons on 24 July 1802.

Banastre Tarleton was brevetted to general on 1 January 1812.

Banastre Tarleton had hoped to be appointed to command British forces in the Peninsular War, but the position was instead given to Wellington.

Banastre Tarleton held a military command in Ireland and another in England.

Banastre Tarleton had lost two fingers from a musket ball received in his right hand during the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, but "his crippled hand was to prove an electoral asset" back home.

Banastre Tarleton first stood as a Whig candidate for Liverpool in the 1784 general election.

Banastre Tarleton was narrowly defeated by Richard Pennant as the second MP of this borough constituency.

Banastre Tarleton was a supporter of Charles James Fox despite their opposing views on the British role in the American War of Independence.

Banastre Tarleton was known for speaking on military matters as well as opposing abolition of the slave trade.

Banastre Tarleton was appointed governor of Berwick and Holy Island in 1808.

Banastre Tarleton had a 15-year relationship with the actress and writer Mary Robinson, known as Perdita, the character she played to much acclaim.

Banastre Tarleton was an ex-mistress of the Prince of Wales.

Banastre Tarleton was important to his parliamentary career, writing many of his speeches.

Banastre Tarleton ultimately married Susan Bertie, the young, illegitimate and wealthy daughter of the 4th Duke of Ancaster in 1798.

Banastre Tarleton did however, father an illegitimate daughter in 1797, prior to his marriage.

Banastre Tarleton bequeathed the trophies to his nephew Thomas Tarleton.

Banastre Tarleton is not listed by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, which is based at University College London, nor by the Slave Voyages database, begun at Emory University, now hosted at Rice University.

Furthermore, unlike many of the Patriots he fought, Banastre Tarleton never owned slaves.

Tilden reported that Banastre Tarleton had been wounded during the siege of Yorktown.

Several writers have said that, after the surrender, Banastre Tarleton was the sole British senior officer not invited to dinner with any American officers.

Banastre Tarleton found no indication that any such meeting took place and considers the incident to be apocryphal.