All language subtitles for The.American.Revolution.Series.1.3of3.Return.of.the.Rebels.720p.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

A ragtag band of brothers takes
on the largest empire in history.

Among them, not just founding
fathers and future presidents,

but the unsung heroes
who also played their part.

Ordinary men and women, whose
extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice

are the real story of
the American Revolution.

Charleston, 1780.
The British army is on the rampage.

And appears well on its
way to crushing the revolution.

Once and for all.

Fighting in the northern
colonies left no decisive winner,

but now the British forces are
pouring into the American south.

They have routed every
army and militia force

the southern patriots
have thrown at them.

Once they have control of the south,

the British plan to direct their
full power on an isolated north.

A key factor has fueled
their recent success.

The south is teeming with
tens of thousands of loyalists.

The idea in London, at
least, was that the south was

more loyal and less of
the hotbed of the revolution,

farther away from Boston and New England.

And so let's try the south,
they'll be more loyal there,

we can capture important
ports and agricultural centers

and kind of restart and regain
the momentum in the war.

The southern loyalists
oppose the revolution,

mainly because their allegiance
to the king is hugely profitable.

It was an agricultural
economy and those products

that were being produced on
southern farms were shipped.

To Britain.
And so that link was very close.

So what do they have to gain?

By breaking away and
becoming an independent country

that now has to protect itself and
spend money on national defense

when they're making money
the way things are going.

Why change?

Just because a bunch of
hotheads in Boston don't

want to pay their taxes
doesn't make any sense.

Now, as the British storm
through the southern colonies,

the patriots' strongholds are crumbling.

And with them, the
revolution's last hopes of victory.

Georgia and South Carolina have fallen.

As the British press inland
to the untamed backcountry,

they leave loyalist militias behind
to hold the captured territory.

By 1780, 8,000 American loyalists
are fighting to crush the revolution.

Nearly equal to the number of soldiers
in the Continental Army opposing them.

In the south, the dark side of
the revolution is fully exposed.

They were fighting their own
brothers and their own cousins.

And it shows how personal
this war really became.

But the bitter fighting
between loyalists and

patriots isn't confined
to the battlefields.

It sweeps through the homes of civilians,

where ordinary people rise to
extraordinary acts of courage.

Nancy Hart is a mother of eight and an
outspoken patriot in the backwoods of Georgia.

With her husband serving
in the local rebel militia,

she's often left on her own.

Ah, Buford's fever broke. He wants ya.

Nancy Hart embodied the
tough, raw-boned frontier woman.

She was imputed to be
close to six feet in height.

Extremely strong.

You did not cross Nancy Hart.

Between backbreaking chores
and tending to her eight children,

Nancy has found the time to
serve the revolution in her own way,

as a patriot spy.

Because of her height and her
somewhat masculine appearance,

she could disguise herself as a man

who could cross over into
the British encampments

and they would
ignore this individual,

thinking this man could pose no threat

and she would gather valuable
intelligence for the patriots.

Nancy's covert moonlighting
is never discovered.

But like all patriots in the south,

her allegiance alone is enough to
attract the attention of local loyalists.

Where is he?

Get out! This is my house!

Where is he?

Where is he?

Loyalists were chasing a patriot and
suspected that Nancy Hart was harbouring

this patriot that they were after.

She wasn't.

And how many men he has with him?

I'm getting tired of
asking these questions.

Where is he at?

And they decided to intimidate her.

The next one is real.

When it comes to her own
safety, Nancy is fearless.

But as a mother, she's terrified.

One false move could endanger her children.

So when the loyalists order Nancy
to cook and feed them her own turkey,

she doesn't resist.

But she also hatches a ply.

If she can get the loyalists drunk, she may
be able to disarm them and send for help.

The soldiers had stacked up their muskets.

And one by one, she was sneaking
the muskets to her daughter.

Hey!

Stop!

First toy that twitches I shoot stone dead.

Who's next?

Nancy manages to hold them off and tell her
husband the rest of the militia show up.

And he wants to shoot them on the spot.

She says, no, that's too good for them.

I want to see them strung up.

And that's what they do.

Skirmish by skirmish,
courageous patriots like Nancy Hart

help to slow the advance
of the British forces.

But every bitter clash deepens the hatred
between the Americans on rival sides.

The colonial slaughter reaches
its peak at King's Mountain.

Of the 2,000 men fighting on both
sides, only one is a British soldier.

It's a preview of the
carnage to come during

the civil war 80 years
in the nation's future.

It encapsulates the reality
of how bitter this war was.

This partisan action,
friend against friend.

Thousands more patriots will
die before the revolution is over.

But most of them will lose their
lives nowhere near a battlefield.

As the revolutionary
war rages in the south,

thousands of American
prisoners are being held

on 16 retired British
warships in New York.

The POWs have been captured
from every theater of the war,

beginning with the
thousands of soldiers that

surrendered during the
1776 invasion of Long Island.

The infamous prison ships are
anchored in a bay in the East River

that is now the site of
the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Their masts, canvas and rigging have been
stripped away and their gun ports sealed.

In their glory days, they
carried crews of 350 men.

Now, as many as 1,400 are
crammed below their decks.

Other than the prisoners and their
guards, humanitarian Elizabeth Bergen

is one of the few witnesses
to what takes place here.

Take it.

Thank you, Miss.

Elizabeth Bergen makes
regular trips to the prison ships,

providing food and supplies
and comfort to the men there.

The British only allow women to
perform that role as a security measure.

And she sees the
conditions under which the

men are being held
there, and she's horrified.

The food was miserable,
wormy bread, undercooked meat,

and disease and malnutrition
was rife among the prisoners.

One soldier wrote that the
air was so thick and disgusting

below deck that you
couldn't even light a candle.

There wasn't enough oxygen.

All these men jammed
together with no ventilation.

Illnesses swept through
the prison ships constantly.

People would die every day, literally
10, 12 people would die every day.

Each morning begins with
the same grim command.

Turn out, you're dead!

Every day, bodies were
brought off the prison ships

and taken to the nearby shore
and buried right along the shoreline.

The British have a standing offer.

If they will join the British Navy and
swear loyalty to the King, they're free.

And instead, these men chose
agonizing death or returning traitor.

Rather than surrender, the
courageous prisoners chose

to face the deadly
conditions of the prison ships,

knowing their chances
of survival were slim.

And without help from
someone on the outside,

they also knew that the odds
of escape were close to zero.

This will offer comfort.

I'm not a believer, ma'am.

Salvation lies within.

History doesn't record the specifics
of Bergin's bold escape plan.

But some claim it hinged on a smuggled drug

to be slipped into the
guards' drink at midnight.

Bergin knows that trying to free the
King's prisoners invites a death sentence.

But with the help of an American spy,

she works out the last
details of her daring mission.

Her plan is believed to
have worked as follows.

At midnight, the smuggled drug
was secretly placed in a guard's beer.

As the drug took effect,
Bergin and her patriot

allies would quietly
row up to the prison ship.

Once the guard was unconscious,

a prisoner would steal his key
to the hatch leading to the deck.

The rescuers arrived just as the
prisoners emerged onto the upper deck

and transported them across
New York harbour to safety.

Elizabeth Bergin is rarely
mentioned in the history books,

but none of the men she rescued over the
next several weeks would ever forget her.

She may have been responsible for
the escape of as many as 200 prisoners,

an extraordinary number for the
daring do of a single individual.

Eventually, the British
discovered what she was doing

and they put a pricer
on her head, 200 pounds.

It may not seem like much today,

but that was about equal to 20
years of pay for a British soldier.

Now a wanted woman, Bergin makes
her own secret escape from New York

and that the urging of George
Washington is later granted

a pension by the Continental
Congress for her services to the nation.

Her only regret is having to
leave thousands of prisoners

still in captivity to face
almost certain death.

Between 10 and 12,000
men died on the prison ships

during the course of the war, so
that's over a period of about six years

when these ships were heavily
occupied, some 12,000 men.

By contrast, there were
perhaps 8,000 patriot

battle deaths in the
entire Revolutionary War.

So it's possible that as
many or more patriots died

aboard the prison ships
than actually died in

battle during the entire
American Revolution.

In 1908, a monument was erected in
Brooklyn's Fort Green neighborhood

to honour the 12,000 patriots who
perished aboard the prison ships,

a reminder of the terrible losses
sustained far from the battlefield.

We should never forget
that war is sacrifice

and no less than those
who died on the battlefield.

The prisoners who died
and suffer aboard the ships

also gave their life and their health for
the same cause of American freedom.

As rebels by the thousands
were dying in the British prisons,

they were also falling in alarming numbers
on the southern American battlefields.

The colony's quest for
independence was fading with them,

and the patriots knew they must soon
turn the tide of battle or face defeat.

In the summer of 1780, 4,000
Americans attempt to make such a stand

by launching a major offensive
against the 2,500 strong British forces

in a desperate effort to hold their relentless
advance through the southern colonies.

If they fail, Britain's conquest of the
entire south seems all but assured.

Although the patriots
outnumber the Redcoats,

they are no match for
Britain's commander,

General Charles Cornwallis.

The rebels' defeat is
also partially self-inflicted.

The day before, the starving soldiers
had devoured a stash of unripe peaches.

Prior to Camden, the American
troops were apparently suffering

from dysentery, a good number of them,
which made them anything but battle-worthy.

So the real strength of the
American force at this critical battle

was much less than you
would think it was on paper,

and disease greatly contributed
to the American defeat at Camden.

Nearly 2,000 patriots, half the
Americans waging the southern campaign,

are killed, wounded or
captured at the Battle of Camden.

Without a miraculous
turnaround, the south will now fall,

the north will follow, and
the revolution will be lost.

The retreating Continental Army at Camden

has abandoned a wealth of
equipment on the battlefield,

leaving a handful of
Americans trying desperately

to retrieve what they can as
they flee from the British advance.

Among them, one patriot
stands out from the rest.

His name is Peter Francisco,

but he's known as the Virginia Giant.

Peter Francisco was an
unbelievable physical specimen,

6'6", 260, 80 pounds, almost unheard of

for someone to be that
size in the 18th century,

and just incredible physical strength.

His heroics during the war often
seemed too incredible to be true,

but none defines his legend better than
what's said to have happened at Camden.

As the legend goes, he
took an 1,100-pound cannon,

hoisted it on his shoulders and took it to
a place where the British wouldn't fight.

The story is commemorated in
the United States postage stamp,

so it does have some credibility.

Whether truth or legend, what is certain

is that George Washington referred
to Francisco as a one-man army.

It's very clear that stories
of Peter Francisco's

great strength were
circulating all over.

He was a character almost like Paul Bunyan,

except we know that
Peter Francisco was real.

We believe he was Portuguese,
born in the Portuguese Azores,

but we have no idea how
and why he got to America.

Francisco's fame isn't only due to
his spectacular size and strength.

He's also one of the most fearless and
ferocious fighters in the Continental Army.

With every battle, he cements his
reputation as a one-man wrecking ball.

From Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania

to Monmouth in New Jersey
to Stony Point in New York.

But such brawn and
bravery have made barely a

dent in the British
advance across the South.

After routing the patriots at Camden,

Cornwallis and his troops
swept north into North Carolina.

The depleted Continental Army,
outnumbered and outclassed,

can no longer engage the Redcoats
in a major battle and hope to win.

Their only chance is to break the rules.

George Washington assigns a new
general to lead the southern campaign,

his most trusted officer,
Rhode Islander Nathaniel Green,

who proposes a very
unconventional plan of attack.

Nathaniel Green changed strategies and
his new strategy proved to be brilliant.

We shall hit the British army and we
shall pull back each time we hit them.

His objective was not to defeat
the British in a pitched battle,

but to wear the British out.

The American strategy was, in essence,

outlast the British, outweight the British.

Don't go into a major
battle, because one major

defeat and it's all
over for the Americans.

In a long series of hit and run skirmishes,

Green harasses Cornwallis and his army.

Each battle ends in
defeat for the patriots.

He described it as we fight,
we get knocked down, we lose,

then we get up and we fight again.

Now, that doesn't seem like a good way to
win a war, but it was actually brilliant.

They chase him through North Carolina

and Cornwallis realizes after a number of
these victories over Green and his forces

that he's now several hundred
miles away from his supply bases.

Brilliant strategic move on Green's part
to bring Cornwallis and the British army

so far from their supply bases that
they can never recover their strength.

As the Redcoats grow weaker,

Green strengthens his army
by recruiting more militia fighters.

The time is approaching
when he will finally

be ready to take
the fight to the British.

After his long series of fighting retreats,

Green decides that time is finally right to
stop running and force a major showdown.

If his army is destroyed, the South is lost

and so he knows he must throw
everything he has at the exhausted British.

Including Peter Francisco.

This is the moment that cements
Peter Francisco into legend.

He's on horseback, he's galloping forward.

Wave after wave of
British are coming at him.

He's hacking these guys.

In one charge, Francisco kills 11 Redcoats.

But Francisco's luck seems to have run out.

It seemed like he was
doomed when a British soldier

with a bayonet pinned
his leg to that of his horse,

virtually incapacitating him.

But then he helped the
soldier withdraw the bayonet

and then killed him with his sword
and made a miraculous escape.

Francisco's victims are
among the 530 British soldiers

killed or wounded at Guildford Courthouse,
twice the number of American casualties.

Green withdraws to minimize his losses,

turning the battle into
another of his tactical defeats.

But the battered British
are in no mood to celebrate.

When news of the victory at
Guildford Courthouse reaches England,

one statesman declares another
such victory will destroy the British army.

Peter Francisco's wounds are
treated and he lives to fight another day.

By summoning all of their strength,

the Patriots had finally halted
the British advance in the South.

In response, the Redcoats
marched north to Virginia to regroup.

For the first time in years,

George Washington had his enemy on the run.

And with British superiority
on the battlefield fading,

the endgame of the six-year
campaign was finally approaching.

But while the Redcoats' relentless
momentum had been reversed,

the battles had also taken a
heavy toll on the American forces.

And Washington knew his own ragged army was
in no shape to press home its advantage.

Casualty report, General.

Thank you, Lieutenant.

He knows he can't score a knockout
blow without the help of his French allies.

Since France joined
the Patriot side in 1777,

its supplies have kept
the Americans in the fight.

6,000 French troops have helped Washington
hold the British army at bay in New York.

But as the French watch their expenses
soar without much progress in the war,

they're tempted to cut their losses
and put an end to the Patriot cause.

Washington knows that
time is running out for

him to deliver an
impressive military victory.

And it's a Virginia slave
named James Armistead

who now steps forward
to help tip the balance.

General Cornwallis believes
Armistead is a loyal British servant.

That he's actually a Patriot spy.

Gentlemen, the question
to you, my officers,

how best to attend to General
Washington and his French boy?

Espionage was just
crucial to Washington's army

and it always is when you
have a small insurgency

fighting against a great empire.

So he poses as an escaped slave
and he won the trust of British officers.

It is simply the shortest distance
from one point to the other.

Armistead is among several slaves
recruited as spies by the Patriots.

They blend in with the tens
of thousands of runaways

who have already sought
refuge with the British.

Most African Americans gave
their allegiance to the British

because the British had
proclaimed that any African American

who came to serve in the British
cause would be guaranteed freedom.

But James Armistead believed in the goals
of freedom and liberty of the revolution.

And of course an African
American could be a very good spy

because the British believed all the
African Americans are obviously on our side.

If the intelligence is true,

we shall come face to face
with General Washington.

The one thing the Americans needed to know

was where the British are and
which direction they're moving in.

So they asked Armistead to do
something incredibly dangerous,

gathering intelligence
right from the source

and delivering that information
back to the American camp.

Remember, we are attempting to regain
familial ties with the former colonials.

If you were caught as a spy,

you would likely be summarily executed.

As the British march through Virginia,

Armistead relays everything he learns
to other spies who carry the intelligence

to the charismatic 23-year-old
Marquis de Lafayette,

the French leader of an outnumbered
American force shadowing the British.

In August 1781, Armistead uncovers a secret

that has the potential to
change the course of the war,

the new base of operations for
the British forces in the South.

Gentlemen, General Clinton has
tasked us with a grave responsibility

to identify a deep-water port
sufficient to accommodate our fleet.

Now, I have determined our best
position appears to be near Yorktown.

Yorktown is a port on the Virginia coast,

an ideal site for
Cornwallis to receive arms,

supplies and troops
transported by the British Navy.

When Lafayette receives this intelligence,

he wastes no time in relaying the
information to Washington in New York.

Cornwallis has no idea he's just
committed a catastrophic military blunder.

In one of history's great coincidences,

a huge fleet of 28 French ships
were sailing directly towards Yorktown.

And thanks to Armistead's advance warning,

Washington now has the
time to plan the perfect trap.

When the French Navy arrives,

they'll have Cornwallis'
escape by water cut off.

If Washington can
march south into Virginia,

he can trap Cornwallis by land.

If they can spring this trap,

they can take half of the British forces
in North America in one fell swoop.

But Washington's scheme will only
work if Cornwallis stays put in Yorktown.

And Cornwallis is about to ruin
everything by preparing to move inland

and attack Lafayette's
outnumbered American force.

Even though he has only 3,200
troops compared to Cornwallis' 8,000,

Lafayette must somehow convince
the Redcoats to stay where they are.

And with the help of James Armistead,

he comes up with a clever ploy.

One of the great ironies is that Cornwallis

assigns Armistead to go
and spy on the Americans.

And Armistead delivers,
he brings back a document.

The document is a phony,
fabricated by Lafayette.

But Cornwallis buys it.

He thinks the American force
is twice as big as it really is.

And so he decides not to attack.

Thanks to Armistead's false information,

Cornwallis remains in Yorktown.

In September, Washington's Allied
ground forces arrive outside the port.

While the French navy blocks
any possible escape route by sea,

the British are now outnumbered two to one.

Over three weeks of American
and French bombardment,

Britain's mighty Imperial Army,

the most highly trained, best equipped,

most professional fighting force on Earth,

is brought to its knees.

On October 19th, 1781,
Cornwallis finally surrenders.

The news rocks Britain to its core.

For Prime Minister Lord Frederick North,

it's a shattering blow.

When he heard this information,

he acted as if he had
been shot in the chest.

It was devastating news.

The consequence of Yorktown was more
important politically than it was militarily,

because it told the British government,

it told the British opposition,

it told British voters and taxpayers,

you know, this war in
America is nowhere near over.

We could keep fighting, we have
to send a whole other army there

and more ships, and
that's way too expensive.

We're simply not going to do it.

Yorktown killed the British
will to continue the war.

But America's independence is far from one.

More lives will be lost before
the final clash of the revolution

brings the bloodshed to an end and
a new day dawns for the young nation.

Yorktown may have been a decisive
turning point in the American Revolution,

but the war grinds on for another year.

More Americans are killed after Yorktown
than during the first year of the war.

Companies of redcoats
continued to clash with

local militias before being
called home to Britain.

September 11, 1782, marks what many consider
to be the revolution's final battle.

A hundred patriots in
the Virginia wilderness

are trapped in Fort Henry by 50
British soldiers and 250 Indians.

The Americans' meager
supply of musket balls

is barely enough to
hold the invaders at bay.

But something just as
crucial is also running out fast.

On day three of the siege, their
gunpowder is nearly exhausted.

There's one last powder
keg left, but it's not in the fort.

It's in a cabin 50 yards away.

Someone has to go get this
thing, but it's a suicide mission.

None of the men could get the
gunpowder because they needed

every single one of them to
fire the muskets from the fort.

In this war, waged largely by the young,

it's only fitting that one of the last acts
of heroism is performed by a teenager.

I can do it.

I can run fast.

Betty Zane is 16 years old.

Until recently, Betty Zane was
going to school in Philadelphia,

far from the war.

Now she's immersed in it, and
hundreds of lives depend on her.

And she took advantage
of the fact, she hoped,

that if she left the fort,
even though it's surrounded

by the British, that they
wouldn't shoot at a woman.

But the keg is too heavy for her to carry.

So she collects as much
powder as she can in her apron.

The enemy troops now
know Betty's up to no good.

She's running back from the cabin.

Bullets are whizzing by her head.

If one strikes her, it's fatal.

If one of those hot bullets
hits that gunpowder, it's all over.

She'll never make it.

The gunpowder Betty
delivers allows the settlers

to hold off their attackers
for one more day,

who finally give up
their siege and retreat.

Thanks to her courage and quick thinking,

the Americans prevail in the
last skirmish of the revolution.

Another year will
pass before hostility's

formally end with the
Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Benjamin West's unfinished
painting, featuring only

the American delegation,
speaks volumes about

the toll that the war
had taken on Britain.

The British were so humiliated
by having to sign this treaty

that they did not want any of
their representatives depicted

in this painting.

West's painting of the
Peacemakers is a great representation

of the Americans, this new
nation, confident, assured,

leaving behind these pale
ghosts of Europe who don't want

to be depicted in the painting,
acknowledging this defeat.

Against all odds, a ragtag
alliance of rebels, men, women

and children had defeated
the world's mightiest empire.

America wins its freedom, even though
it loses most of the individual battles.

There's no point at which the
entire affair isn't on a knife edge.

Until this time, countries
had emerged organically.

France, Spain, Britain itself had
emerged over hundreds of years.

The United States of
America emerged like that.

The idea that you could create a country
that way was absolutely revolutionary.

In the end, it demonstrates
the dedication of that

generation to achieving
independence and liberty.

Today, it's still possible
to gaze into the faces

of some of the heroes
of America's revolution.

Not only depicted in
paintings, but also preserved

in a handful of rare
photographs of revolutionary

war veterans who posed
for a portrait decades later.

The apprentice blacksmith who
attended the Boston Tea Party.

The drummer boy, frozen with
Washington at Valley Forge.

The surgeon's mate who tended
to the wounded at Yorktown.

These few pictures remaining
of these veterans serve

an incredibly important
purpose, and that is to remind us

that regular people fought
the American Revolution.

Ordinary people whose
extraordinary courage

and sacrifice had won
America its independence.

When historians talk
about events of the past,

we talk about battles, the big picture.

Rarely do we talk about the common man,

the unsung hero that changes a battle,
changes a war of the course of history.

These people many times are unknown to us.

All those people's stories matter just as
much as the stories of the great leaders.

It's easy to lose track
of all of those individuals,

but they're there and they
deserve to be remembered.

One of the great lessons
of history, of all history,

is that ordinary people
can do extraordinary things.

The men and women we
think of as unsung heroes,

all of them realize that they
are part of something bigger,

something grander, something
that is part of making the world anew.

That they are doing something,
not just for themselves,

but for posterity, for their children.

As Emerson's poem much later says,

these heroes who dared to
die and leave their children free.