Tired of the Whining

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2000)

The Patriot is an excellent movie and a definite must-see. I'm not going to bore you with plot details, etc., you can read that in countless prior posts. However, as to the constant whining that events like these never occurred during the Revolutionary War and that the British would never have resorted to such tactics is quite humorous.
The character of the evil Tavington is based on the real-life British officer Banastre "Bloody" Tarleton, who probably made the screen version of Tavington look like a saint. Where did he get the nickname "Bloody" from you ask?....well it wasn't because he donated blood to the Red Cross! In May of 1780 at the Waxhaws, South Carolina, Tarleton and his British soldiers slaughtered 113 Virginia Continentals by bayonet and wounded nearly 200 more AFTER the Americans had called for quarter and showed a flag of truce!! That is where Tarleton's legend began and it was how he became the most hated British soldier in the Southern theater of the Rev. War. It became known as "Tarleton's Quarter" and it was the first of many atrocities committed by the psychopath.
Paybacks are a bitch though, and at the Battle of Cowpens Tarleton lost 900 men killed, wounded or captured, about 90% of his force. The American forces lost 12 men killed.
The war in the South basically amounted to a Civil War among Patriots and Loyalists, and as everyone knows those are the worst and bloodiest kind. While it's true that most of the atrocities committed in that area were actually between the Patriots and the Loyalists, the British regulars, most notably Tarleton, had a big hand in the activities as well.
It's also true that in ANY war there are atrocities committed by all sides, no one is clean in that respect, that's why they say war is hell. But for people to keep crying that events like those depicted never happened and were never perpetrated by the British are simply wrong.
Others have talked about the unbelievable scenes where Gibson singlehandedly kills several British soldiers like a Revolutionary Rambo. Well, I don't know for sure, but some of those occurrences may have been taken from the real-life Patriot named Peter Francisco. A very large man for that period in time, Francisco, at Guilford Courthouse in 1781 cut down 11 British soldiers with his five-foot sword, and later at Ward's Tavern in Virginia he held off 9 British dragoons single-handed.
The "Patriot" is a movie and that's all. If some of you people want to watch a documentary tune to the History Channel. It's the same thing with "Saving Private Ryan," where so many British or Canadians were crying that, "They didn't even mention anything about us; why weren't we featured?; they just want to make it look like America won the war all by themselves. Cry, Cry, Cry!!" It was an AMERICAN film about AMERICAN soldiers on an AMERICAN mission for God's sake! Again, if you want to watch a documentary go to the History Channel, or better yet, make your own films about the events. I promise we won't cry if the Americans aren't mentioned!
While there are several "inaccuracies" in the "Patriot", the events and characters in the movie have a lot of basis in truth and actual history.