Benjamin Martin Is Mainly Based on Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion
The details of Benjamin Martin’s life and family are made up; he was not a Patriot militia leader who fought in the Revolutionary War. However, screenwriter Robert Rodat explains that Benjamin is based on a number of different historical figures, including Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, Thomas Sumter, Nathanael Greene, Andrew Pickens, and Daniel Morgan in the DVD featurette “True Patriots.” Many aspects of Benjamin’s personality, such as his participation in the French and Indian War, his use of guerrilla warfare techniques, his recruitment and management of militia members, and his use of ambushes to gather intelligence, are directly lifted from Francis Marion’s biography, suggesting that Marion was the main inspiration.
Creating a fictional character rather than using any one historical figure gives The Patriot an excuse to leave out details that would have been harder for modern audiences to tolerate in a supposed hero. For example, the African-American characters who work in Benjamins home and fields are said to be freed slaves who are devastated when theyre forcibly taken away to fight for the British. Francis Marion, however, was a slaveowner who had a reputation for raping his female slaves, and during the war he targeted and executed freed slaves who were suspected of working with the British. He was also known for his persecution and slaughter of Cherokee Indians, which in the movie is rewritten as a single wartime incident that Benjamin Martin considers his greatest shame and regret. An anonymous source from Sony Pictures told The Guardian that the movie was originally supposed to be a factual biography of Marion, but “They couldnt go ahead once historians had given them chapter and verse on the Swamp Fox, so they had to change his name.”
William Tavington Is Loosely Based On Banastre Tarleton
The main antagonist of The Patriots is Jason Isaacs’ cartoonishly evil William Tavington, who is based on the actual British soldier and politician Sir Banastre Tarleton. When Marion caused trouble for British forces in South Carolina, the task of tracking down and capturing the “Swamp Fox” fell to the real Tarleton, who commanded British forces at the Battle of Cowpens (the subject of The Patriots third act). Like Tavington in the movie, he was unsuccessful. The moniker “the Butcher” was given to Tarleton, but not because of a pattern of torturing innocent people.
The Battle of Waxhaws, where Tarleton was shot from his horse and impaled beneath it, is where the moniker originated. He was temporarily unable to give orders, but his men persisted in killing Continental soldiers—many of whom were capitulating or not putting up a fight. With Tarleton serving as the primary antagonist of the narrative, the Continental Army used the “Waxhaws massacre” as part of a propaganda offensive against the British. The campaign was extremely effective, and “Tarletons Quarter” became a catchphrase for “taking no prisoners.” But William Tavington, who is portrayed as a child killer in The Patriot, was not Tarleton, and Tavington’s most horrifying act undoubtedly never took place.
The final setpiece of the movie has elements from the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and the Battle of Cowpens in 1781. Martin seizes the Stars and Stripes and takes the lead as they advance on General Cornwallis’s soldiers. The Brits are taken by surprise, and defeated. The real Cornwallis would have been caught off guard as well because he had never lost in South Carolina and wasn’t even present at the Battle of Cowpens. He won Guilford Courthouse. Contrary to Tavington in the movie, who perished, Tarleton lost Cowpens but lived to a ripe old age. After the Yorktown siege, George Washington was the actual general whose victory over Cornwallis ended the war. Here, all he gets is a passing mention.
The Patriot claimed that slavery was virtually unknown in South Carolina and that it wasn’t all that bad. The few slaves displayed are a happy group who have all been freed and are relocating to a beachside cabana. Theres even a token slave in Martins militia. Martin’s son Gabriel (Heath Ledger) sincerely informs him that “we will have a chance to create a new world where all men are equal in the eyes of God.” ” “Equal,” intones the slave. “That sounds good. ” Dont get your hopes up, old chap. Nearly a century after The Patriot is set, the US civil war was necessary to end slavery in that country. Even then, South Carolina was on the wrong side because it was so committed to slavery that it was the first state to leave the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln.
Tavington herds noncombatants into a church in one scene, locks the doors, and sets the building on fire. Some historians pointed out the parallels between this and the infamous Nazi massacre of French villagers in Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944 at the time the movie was released. However, it is not similar to anything that occurred during the American Revolution. “This will be forgotten,” scoffs Tavington. Insinuating that just because no one has ever heard of the British army setting fire to a church full of innocent people in South Carolina doesn’t mean it didn’t happen is a disgraceful attempt to plant the seeds of an entirely unfounded conspiracy theory. Well, it didnt. It could have prevented us from entering World War I, as noted by American historian Richard F. Snow: “Of course it never happened – do you think Americans would have forgotten it if it had? “.
British colonies in America rose up to fight for independence in 1776. Many European powers participated in the conflict, which was resolved in 1783 by the Treaty of Paris.
South Carolina militia leader Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) is a humble single father whose hobbies include freeing slaves, being lovely to his seven angelic children and whittling rocking chairs. Martin is based on a sanitised composite of several historical militiamen, most obviously the “Swamp Fox”, Francis Marion. In contrast to the virtuous Martin, the British Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs), based on the real Banastre Tarleton, is a sneering, sadistic monster. Tarleton was accused of various evils – including firing on surrendering troops at Waxhaw Creek – but the deeds attributed to Tavington here are wholly made up. Furthermore, for all Martin keeps banging on about Tavington breaking “the rules of war”, there werent any in the 1780s. There was an expectation that officers and soldiers would respect certain customs, but nothing was formalised until the first Geneva convention in 1864.