NEMESIS GEORGE WASHINGTON’S

◗ Christian Mcburney ◗ Savas Beatie (2020) ◗ £25.95 ◗ 288 pages (hardback) ◗ ISBN:9781611214659 ◗ casematepublishers.co.uk

Subtitled The Outrageous Treason and Unfair Court-martial of Major General Charles Lee during the American Revolution, this book examines Lee’s extraordinary behaviour while a prisoner of the British in Newyork in March 1777, when he actually submitted a plan to General Sir William Howe for defeating the rebellion, which was not discovered until 1858, in the papers of the Strachey family, long after his death, and his performance at the Battle of Monmouth Court House on 28th July 1778, for which he was court-martialled.

The author seeks to present an objective, balanced view of Lee’s complex personality. Charles Lee, the son of an English officer, was of genteel birth and well-educated in private schools in England and Switzerland, yet did not conform to what was expected of an 18th century English gentleman, being careless of his appearance and impudent and eccentric in manner, scandalising a lady by expecting her to shake the paw of Spada, his Pomeranian dog. He believed he had inherited mental instability from his mother, Isabella Bunbury; he may have suffered from manic depression or bipolar disorder.

He was a brave, skilful and successful officer who had served in the French and Indian War and in the Portuguese, Polish and Russian armies, but was often in trouble off the battlefield because he did not bother to conceal his contempt for his superiors if he thought them mistaken. Lee resigned his commission of lieutenant-colonel the British Army to fight for the Americans, yet his dying words,“stand fast, my brave grenadiers!” show he was imagining himself a British officer once again. He became second in command of the Continental Army, yet whilst in captivity came to believe that the Americans could not win but should make peace with the British and offered to assist in any peace process.

The first three chapters describe Lee’s character and his capture at Widow White’s Tavern on 13th December 1776, analyses Lee’s motives for offering Howe a strategic plan for defeating the rebels and whether his secret communications with the British would have justified a charge of treason had they been revealed in his lifetime. Wargamers may find the lengthy discussion of such legal niceties less than fascinating and will prefer the later chapters describing Lee’s career upon rejoining the Continental Army at Valley Forge on 21st May 1778; the Battle of Monmouth Court House, accompanied by six one-page maps showing the development of the battle; the reasons for his ordering a retreat at Monmouth, and the author’s detailed explanation of why the verdict of his courtmartial was politically motivated and how it was unfair.

Forty black and white illustrations, mainly reproductions of portraits or prints of persons mentioned in the text, are distributed throughout the book. In addition to the maps of Monmouth Court House, there is one showing the locations and dates of Lee’s court-martial sessions, but for some inexplicable reason this is not in the appendix, The Probable Locations of the Proceedings of Charles Lee’s Court-martial, but a hundred pages earlier. References are given in the form of footnotes; a ten-page bibliography and a thirteen-page index conclude the book.

This is an interesting account of a fascinating character’s role in the American Revolution and... one can always skip the legal discussion!

Arthur Harman