Thanks Pharmboy. I wondered what this meant:
“notorious British cavalry leader Banestre Tarleton”
Found this hissy fit:
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/071100/mov_0711000005.shtml
“Yes, Tarleton was a ruthless soldier,” Clein added, “but the film goes a lot farther than that and assassinates his character altogether.”
No evidence exists that Tarleton was involved in infanticide or any incidents such as the church arson and murders, said Scott Withrow, historian at South Carolina’s Cowpens National Battlefield, where the Redcoats were defeated in 1781.
“As far as I know, it did not happen,” said Withrow, though he noted Tarleton had a reputation for brutality. “Somehow the Patriot forces latched onto Tarleton and used him for propaganda. The Patriot army were masters of this at that time and they built him up as a hated person.”
These two are from an American source:
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/williamsburg/dp-news_revwarflags_1222dec22,0,7042608.story
...Rejecting Tarleton’s demand for his surrender, Col. Abraham Buford held his troops’ fire until it was too late, then watched as the overwhelming British charge wrenched his position into chaos...
...”So prized were these hard-won banners that Tarleton sent them back to England long before he surrendered 18 months later as part of the devastating British defeat at Yorktown.”
It was said that he gave no quarter to Patriots who surrended, and afterwards the Patriots called for no quarter to the Brits and referred to it as "Tarleton's Quarter."
The RevWar had its particularly bloody and cruel moments (not the least of which were the 10,000 or so deaths of Patriots in the British prison ships in Wallabout Bay in NYC).