Henry Clinton
Sir Henry Clinton (l. c. 1730-1795) was a British military officer who served as commander-in-chief of the British Army in the later stages of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Having arrived in Boston in May 1775, he served in North America for most of the war, resigning his post in 1782 after the British defeat at the Siege of Yorktown.
The son of a British admiral, Clinton became a soldier at the age of 15 and saw action in Germany during the Seven Years' War. Thanks to his connections to British lords, he quickly rose through the ranks and was one of three British generals sent to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1775 to crush the American rebellion. Clinton was famously jealous, paranoid, and quick-tempered, traits that made it difficult for him to work with his fellow officers; still, he was well-educated in military matters and was among the most competent British tacticians of the war. As commander-in-chief, he led the British army at the Battle of Monmouth and the Siege of Charleston, but his lack of support for his second-in-command, Lord Charles Cornwallis, contributed to the British loss of the American South. After the war, he returned to England, where he received much of the blame for the British defeat before his death in December 1795.
Early Career
Little is known about Clinton's early life or childhood. He was likely born on 16 April 1730, although the time and location of his birth have been disputed; some scholars claim he was born in Newfoundland when his father was governor there, which, if true, would push his birth year back to 1732 at the earliest. What is known for certain, however, is that he came from a wealthy family of noble pedigree. His family was a cadet branch of the House of Lincoln, which could trace its earldom back to the reign of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603), and his uncle was related by marriage to the first Duke of Newcastle, who often lent his patronage to the Clinton family (Willcox, 4). Henry's father was British Admiral George Clinton (not to be confused with the future U.S. Vice President of the same name) and his mother was Anne Carle, a general's daughter. He also had two siblings, both sisters, who survived to adulthood.
Through the Duke of Newcastle's influence, Admiral Clinton was appointed governor of the Province of New York in 1741. The admiral did not arrive to take up his post until September 1743, taking his family with him. Henry, who was at most 13 when he arrived in New York, was probably educated at the Long Island school of Samuel Seabury, the future first bishop of the American Episcopal Church. In 1745, he began his military career when he enlisted in the New York militia as a lieutenant. The following year, his father procured for him a captain's commission, and he was sent to join the garrison of Louisbourg, a fort on the Saint Lawrence River that had recently been captured from the French. While stationed there, he was ambushed by a band of French and Native Americans, narrowly avoiding death by "stripping and jumping into the sea" (Willcox, 10).
In the summer of 1749, Clinton realized his prospects for military advancement in the colonies were limited, prompting him to return to England. With Newcastle's help, he was commissioned as a captain in the illustrious Coldstream Guards and, by 1758, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Grenadier Guards. By then, Europe was engulfed in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) and Clinton's regiment was sent to Germany to bolster the Anglo-German army trying to prevent a French invasion of Hanover. He fought at the Battle of Villinghausen (16 July 1761) and Battle of Wilhelmsthal (24 July 1762), serving shoulder to shoulder with fellow British officers William Phillips and Lord Charles Cornwallis, both of whom would also become prominent generals in the American Revolution. He served as aide-de-camp to Charles William Ferdinand, future Duke of Brunswick, (the same Prussian general who would one day fight the French revolutionaries at the Battle of Valmy) in whose service Clinton was seriously wounded at Nauheim (30 August 1762).
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