ccording to Johnson, an army with a peak strength of 60,000 and an annual desertion rate of 20 percent, and a small but effective navy. Johnson contrasted the military situation in 1775 and 1781 as follows:
the British, who had begun the War with an enormous
superiority in trained men and guns and with complete
control of the sea, ended it outnumbered, outgunned, and
It would, therefore, appear that Great Britain had the power
to quash the rebellion in the early stages of the war, but failed to do so. Why that happened is a complicated story.
When his infantry stormed Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill outside of Boston on June 18-19, 1775, General Thomas Gage frittered away his numerical superiority by frontal attacks by heavily laden men against armed redoubts. His forces prevailed but only after taking enormous casualties. According to Seymour, this revealed that "the British had seriously underestimated the courage, resolution and ability of the Patriots," illusions which were to plague many British field officers throughout the war.
In that same battle, Gage could have outflanked the Patriots and cut off their line of retreat, but failed to do so. Gage and his successor, Sir William Howe, later was inattentive to their own flank, allowing Washington to occupy Dorchester Heights with artillery which forced Howe to evacuate Boston on March 27, 1776. Although Howe was to use successfully maneuvers to outflank Washington's defenses in Long Island in August 1776, Robson attributed the conventional set piece battle approach to war followed by almost all British generals to their training in European warfare in Europe. He said that "Howe . . . followed exactly the art of war in Europe in the eighteenth century."
Their overwhelming seapower enabled the British to conquer the major cities of the Atlantic seaboard, such as New York City which they captured in 1776 and held until the end of the war. Washington, o...