 The British camp at Winnsboro was not particularly comfortable, and the men were often sick, living in crude accommodations not unlike those that Washington's men had erected at Valley Forge in 1777. The army suffered from a general lack of supplies, but wagons and horses were in particularly short supply, and the earl discovered that his quartermasters were profiteering on the provisioning of those items. The methods by which horses were acquired also served to alienate their Loyalist friends, since the quartermasters were sometimes indiscriminate, seizing horses from Patriots and Loyalists alike. His supply lines were also continually harassed, particularly by Francis Marion. In November he ordered Tarleton out to capture Marion; the two commanders successfully maneuvered themselves out of entrapments laid by the other. Tarleton eventually returned to Cornwallis, reporting that Marion's force had been broken up; several days later, Marion resumed his guerrilla war.
