The three generals at the center of this set carried Britain's North American war from its first major victory to its last surrender. William Howe took Bunker Hill at appalling cost in June 1775, ran Washington out of New York in 1776, and won Brandywine and Germantown in 1777 — and twice declined to press his advantage when the Continental Army stood broken in front of him. John "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne — playwright, gambler, parliamentarian — marched south from Canada in the summer of 1777 with an army of British, German, and Indian troops, overstretched his supply line in the Hudson Valley wilderness, and surrendered to Horatio Gates at Saratoga that October. His was the surrender that brought France into the war on the American side. Charles Cornwallis fought the war's full length — Long Island, Trenton, Brandywine, Camden, Guilford Court House — and gave it its final scene on October 19, 1781, when he pleaded illness and sent his deputy Charles O'Hara to hand a sword to Washington's deputies at Yorktown. None of the three was lacking in soldierly competence; each was undone in his turn by an underestimation of the American capacity to keep fighting. This Tradition of London set is a six-piece British command group, hand-cast in white metal at 54mm and finished in the gloss enamel of the classic Tradition line. The five figures form a headquarters tableau: a sergeant of the line stands at the left grounding his halberd — the NCO's badge of rank British regiments carried into the AWI before phasing it out for the musket in the early 1790s; Howe sits at the center on a small chest with a map on his lap, the gold lace of a senior officer's regimentals running down his coat and his crimson sash across his chest; Burgoyne stands beside him in similar laced order, his bicorne under his arm and sword in hand; Cornwallis flanks the group on the right, also in full regimentals and laced cuffs; a regimental drummer at the far right completes the detail in his reversed-colors yellow coat and grenadier-pattern cap. The drum-with-map prop in front of the group is the period field expedient — when no campaign desk was at hand, the drum-head served as the impromptu table on which orders were drafted. The set is the British command counterpart to the Tradition American Generals set, and pairs with W. Britain matte figures of British line and grenadier infantry like the 43rd Foot grenadier marching for collectors building a full British command-and-line scene. Set Number: 201 / Tradition of London — Soldiers for Collectors / 54mm scale / white metal / gloss enamel / 5 figures + drum-with-map accessory
