Page 221 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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City, British thoughts turned once again toward doing something about the Rhode Island
malcontents who had thus far largely avoided the harsh hand of war.
The 8th of December 1776 turned out to be an ominous day for the city of Newport. Just
off the harbor entrance a massive British seaborne invasion force of over 80 sail and led by
General Henry Clinton had arrived from New York. Many of the residents made immediate
preparations to leave the island. Continental Marine Captain John Trevett, a native of New-
port and temporarily assigned to command the Marines on the Continental Sloop Providence,
noted in his diary that on the morning of the British invasion: “This day my Father and
Mother and a kinswoman and a young son of my Brothers went off for East Greenwich, they
had but a few hours notice, they took with them some beds, and bedding, and a few trunks
with clothing, and left their home with all the remainder of the furniture behind, with their
wood, provisions, and everything necessary for the Winter…but to end this affair, all that he
left behind, was lost partly by the British, but mostly by our own people.” While Captain
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Trevett did not absolve the British invaders of all culpability for any damage done to the
town on this first day of occupation, he does seem to imply that much of the looting of homes
was done by locals. Thus one of the first orders of business by the overall commander of the
invasion force, Lieutenant General Lord Hugh Percy, was the establishment of a “Corps of
Safe Guards” whose job was to provide the town and surrounding countryside with a military
police force and to get a handle on any spontaneous looting that might take place by the sol-
diery or the citizens themselves. The “Safe Guards” consisted of one Subaltern and 15 men
from each British and Hessian brigade. A British Captain would be in command to include
those Safe Guards formed by the Hessian regiments as well.
The overall commander of what the British referred to as the “first debarkation” at New-
port was British Major General Richard Prescott. When Lord Percy returned to England in
early 1777, command of the Newport garrison troops fell to Prescott. However, on this first
day of the invasion, he was in charge of the Light Infantry and Grenadiers, elite organizations
that consisted of specially selected soldiers from the regular line battalions, and the British
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3 Brigade that consisted of four regular infantry formations, the 10 , 37 , 38 , and 52 reg-
iments. A second “debarkation” was landed soon afterward. This force consisted entirely of
the greatly feared Hessians. The Hessians were commanded by Brigadier General Friedrich
Wilhelm von Lossberg. General Lossberg’s forces consisted of: the Leib regiment, Regiment
Prince Carl, and Regiment von Ditfurth and Regiment von Wutginau. These German soldiers
were all erroneously referred to as Hessians by the Americans since the Principality of Hesse
had been among the first to offer the services of its troops in exchange for payment by the
British Crown. In fact, quite a number of German Principalities supplied the British with
troops for hire before the war was over. Nonetheless, especially after their first introduction
during the New York campaign in the summer of 1776, the Hessians had a well deserved
battlefield reputation for military efficiency and ferocity. 2
A “third debarkation” was ordered ashore immediately after the first two had seized the

1 John Trevett, diary entry of December 6, 1776, in Charles R. Smith, Marines in the American Revolution,
(Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1975), 327.
2 Don N. Hagist, General Orders, Rhode Island, December 1776 – January 1778, (Bowie, MD: Heritage
Books, 2001), 2-3.