The Little War Meets British Military Discipline in America 1755-1781

This thesis agrees with the notion that there was a strong European tradition of the little war. It also agrees that special corps were created in America to fight the little war. It goes one large step further. It presents evidence to suggest that the majority of the British army which fought in the American War for Independence fought using open tactics. General Henry Clinton called the new formation, that loose flimsy order. What is more, a prototype of this method was begun as early as 1759, when General Amherst ordered his troops to use the two-rank line instead of the three-rank line. The army had evolved too rapidly in America. When it returned to Britain, it was an army of light troops. Thus, the reaction against it at the end of the war was caused by it having gone too far in the direction of the little war - to the detriment of the conventional war. The argument, as earlier had been supposed, did not concern saving or ending light tactics, it concerned returning the army to a proper balance between light tactics and conventional tactics.