Line Infantry - A New Release
Portrayed here is Carl Duff’s impression of a Colonial American line infantry soldier of the 2nd Maryland Regiment, a unit of the Continental Army, which was the force raised in turn by the Second Continental Congress to confront the Crown Forces during the American War of Independence. Possessed of a somewhat strong attack and defense in both melee and ranged combat, with a comparatively low deploy value, Line Infantry make a good choice for the backbone of any army.
The Rebellion’s so-called Continental Line went through three iterations over the first three years of the war, showing great malleability in the way of reforms and political changes as they sought to develop tried and true methods to fight the mighty British Empire whilst the Crown, in turn, also sought out a means to punish the plucky Rebel opposition.
One example of the new rulings for the 1777 establishment on the Rebel side proclaimed that since the Revolutionary army had nearly collapsed at the end of 1776 after a series of defeats and a challenging winter, that they would only take enlistments for three years or for the duration of the war. Prior to this, soldiers could only sign one year papers and then were given the opportunity to stand down. Another ruling from that time period also designated how many battalions (essentially a regiment of men, as a battalion and regiment were largely interchangeable back then with a few notable exceptions), were to be raised by each colony. Maryland, for example, was called upon to raise eight battalions to do battle, whereas Massachusetts and Virginia needed to raise fifteen, and Delaware and Georgia need only have raised one.
Even still, by December 27, 1776, George Washington and his fellow officers had convinced Congress that the total of 88 regiments were not enough to challenge the Crown Forces and raised the number still higher to a total of 110 regiments, and sixteen additional infantry and three additional artillery regiments were formed, in addition to a corps of engineers and some 3,000 light horsemen. These fellows, in addition to three other regiments previously authorized by Congress (a pair of Canadian regiments fomenting chaos in their homeland up north) and Seth Warner’s partisan Green Mountain Boys, along with some colonies exceeding their quotas, led to a total of 119 regiments being fielded in 1777.
Altogether, these brave soldiers, along with colonial militia and significant French and Spanish support, managed to hold out long enough against the soldiers of Great Britain and her allies such that the Crown, having already suffered enormous financial difficulties prior to the war and now also facing war with France, Spain, Holland and potentially even Russia in various colonial wars the world over, gave up on reclaiming the thirteen colonies and sought to protect her more lucrative holdings.
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