"species of guerrilla warfare' just drips with contempt for Sir Sidney's efforts and Sir Sidney's was, perhaps, the rarest of all species of guerrilla war; a royalist guerrilla war.

To be fair to Fox, Moore, and Stuart, at the time, the concept of a guerrilla war was entirely foreign to the English army. Even the term guerrilla war had yet to be expressed.

Not exactly. Whatever the attitudes of those officers to the class warfare implications of Smith's enterprise, the British army in America had been gaining experience in petit guerre since the 1750s- although there was a tendency to fritter it away at the end of each campaign. Moore, in particular, as a leading proponent of the Light Infantry ethos, nurturing the intelligence and initiative of the common soldier, would not have found guerilla tactics foreign. .

The issue may have been more to do with undisciplined irregulars fighting without centralised command and discipline, often engaging in what they regarded as murder Moore and Stuart were professional soldiers after all. In America during the War of Independence, one British Light infantry officer described rebel militia sniping from cover at British troops in transit, as rascals.. .skulking about the country engaging in a dirty dirty of tiraillerie.