f some of the British troops who treated some of the American civilian population with contempt. The rape and ransacking carried out by some of the British troops 'Converted potential friends into enemies.' The loyalists, if organised properly, could have secured the land that the British army had won. Instead as the British army moved on from one area to the next the newly gained land was soon back in the hands of the Americans.
             Major-General Charles Lee of the Continental Army had been a General in the British Army, he wrote in an essay in 1774 that the British Army was 'Ineffective, recruited from the poorest classes and as short of generals as the American army.' This was the view of a Major General in the Continental Army and that view must have been enhanced when the British withheld some of their best troops and kept them in England. The reason for this was because the British feared that the French might take advantage of the war and attack them at home
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