Banastre Tarleton was born in Liverpool, England on August 21, 1754. In 1775 he became an officer in a British dragoon unit and sailed to America as part of the British Army. In 1778 he became a lieutenant colonel of a mixed cavalry and infantry regiment of loyalists, called the British Legion. Tarleton and his dragoons soon took an active part in the Revolutionary War's southern theater. Tarleton gained a reputation as a bloody and vindictive commander when some of his men killed surrendering wounded soldiers after the fall of Charleston in 1780, though Tarleton later claimed he had been pinned under his horse at the time and unable to command his men. Tarleton continued to have regular skirmishes with Patriot troops in both North and South Carolina, suffering his most notable loss at the Battle of Cowpens in 1781. He was later also wounded at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown along with the rest of Cornwallis' army. He died in England on January 15, 1833.