Page 229 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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Nonetheless, desertion seemed to continue with British and Hessian troops at a fairly
brisk rate. In fact, during the 18 century many army units experienced desertion rates of
th
up to 20 percent of their complement. Major Mackenzie noted in his journal on 4 Septem-
ber 1777, that two soldiers of the 22 Regiment deserted in the night added that: “there is
nd
no doubt there are some persons there who make it their business to intice the Soldiers to
desert, and assist them in making their escape; which is no difficult matter as we have at
present no Guards or Patroles from the right of the Encampment of The Chasseurs at Point
Pleasant, quite round to Easton’s beach.” He believed that “any inhabitant convicted of
such practices should be hanged immediately. The lenity shown so frequently to declared
Rebels has been productive of numberless ill consequences.” The real difficulty for British
forces at Newport in preventing desertion was directly due to being located on an island in
close proximity to the American lines on all sides. Mackenzie also stated that Private Wil-
liam Bennet of the 54 Regiment was hanged following his conviction at a General Court
th
Martial for desertion but believed that the punishment was less effective due to the amount
of time that had elapsed between the soldier’s desertion and his execution. Nonetheless a
select group of 50 men from each regiment were paraded to witness Bennet’s execution. 25
One way acting British commandant, General Robert Pigot, responded to the problem
of locals enticing soldiers to desert was to round up male citizens of military age who were
suspected of disloyalty and place them aboard the now empty transport ships in Newport har-
bor. In October 1777 after a series of fairly large raids on his outposts on the north end of the
island, Pigot ordered 70 Newporters jailed aboard the ships for an indefinite period of time.
Furthermore, it was common garrison practice that as the weather got colder, the more troops
would be quartered in the town itself and fewer men were placed on outpost duty. Those that
were out of town were rotated on a monthly basis. Thus there were fewer opportunities for
the locals on the north end of the island to establish relationships or permanent contact with
the soldiers on duty there.
On 25 October 1777 one Newport diarist noted that the British Provost marshal contin-
ued to arrest citizens and send them aboard the transports. However, it was not long before
smallpox broke out among the detainees and consequentially also spread to town itself. The
diarist noted that “numbers of small children break out with it.” Sick and destitute refugees
from Newport flooded into the nearby town of Providence. The winter that year was espe-
cially harsh and the town continued to suffer. Ambrose Serle, secretary to British Admiral
Richard Howe, arrived in Newport in January 1778 and noted that “the Country is pleasant
but entirely stripped of its Trees & Fences, which have been taken for Fuel.” 26
During February 1778, the new Franco-American alliance was announced and it immedi-
ately changed the entire complexion of the war. Now the British not only had to guard against
American forces surrounding the island but the possibility of a French invasion fleet arriving
off the harbor mouth with little to no notice. Moreover, British intelligence had determined
that the French fleet at Toulon had sortied from its base and, under the command of Jean-

25 Mackenzie, 4 September 1777, Vol. 1, 173, 252.
26 Anonymous Diarist, “Newport in the Hands of the British,” The Historical Magazine, (February, 1860),
35-36; Ambrose Serle, The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776-1778, (San
Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1940), 253.