Hi John,

Tom has kindly posted the two main citations for this practice. As you rightly say in your reply, the idea that the British were deliberately taunting the Rebels indicates a total ignorance of the function and purpose of hunting calls. Clearly, the modern authors are trying to create some idea that the British "got what they deserved for being cocky", whereas the call would have indicated nothing more than that the pursuers had lost track of the pursued, and that the pursuing formations should halt and rally.

I understand that specific calls are common to all hunts today, but was this always the case? I suspect a few officers might have ridden with the same hunts, and therefore known the standard calls of those hunts; presumably, it would not have been difficult to acquaint other officers with them. As I understand it, horns would have been used to alert troops on a battalion-wide basis (there were several companies of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion involved) - as well as men in other battalions - whereas whistle and hat signals were used by an individual officer in controlling his own men. Somewhere, I have a Brigade of the American Revolution newsletter with a list of hat signals - I shall try and find it if anyone is interested. Were cap flourishes still being used as signals in the Napoleonic era?

Brendan greetings,

Yes indeed. The key source for the hubristic hunting call trope is of course Joseph Reed's account which, for the reasons you mention, continues to overshadow the other references to bugle horns 'rallying their men' (Lewis Morris) and a French horn blown 'for a reinforcement' (Lt. Joseph Hodgkins).

As far as I am aware, each light company commander would have had a bugler to communicate with the men under his command. For communicating with his battalion commander, presumably it would have been necessary to develop drills and calls in theatre when Howe formed his light battalions in 1776 (Were the light companies at Lexington and Bunker Hill, organised into battallions with any form of establishment, as such?).

In the main however, I suspect bugle calls would have been most effective for general calls to control comparitively small bodies of men in enclosed ground within a restricted area. The possibility for confusion would otherwise have been too great. At Harlem Heights, with perhaps ony three or four companies having reached the Hollow Way, that meant four hunting horns being sounded to call the pursuing light troops to cease fire and rally on their officer. Cause enough for confusion.

How standardised hunting calls were by the 1770s is a good question. The possibility of their being borrowed directly by light infantry officers seems logical but certainly by 1800, the German system seems to have been standard.

Interestingly, the jäger commander Johann Ewald in his Treatise on Light Infantry Discipline (copied by Rothenburg) lists some basic calls that would have resembled hunting calls
Rally on the officer - 3 short blasts
Cease Fire - Short blasts, over and over

These would not have recalled the sad notes at end of a fox chase, however, but resembled more closely the calls at the start of a chase.

There is an interesting demonstration of light infantry bugle calls circa 1815 here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIn-fvoCCCU

As a footnote, in his memoirs of American service, Johann Ewald refers to sounding the 'half moon'- the large German hunting horn- but it seems to have been used more for general calls to advance or retreat. Meanwhile, when more discreet commands were required in the Charleston campaign of 1780, he reports, "The general gave me a prearranged signal to withdraw with a white handkerchief. I whistled back to my men to retire ( for on such occasons no horn is blown..)"

In 1781, commmanding a force of Queen's Rangers and jägers during a confused woodland skirmish near Williamsburg, Ewald was asked by a lieutenant to sound the call to assemble the jägers "for they had dispersed so widely" and risked capture by a superior force of French. Ewald informed him. "we did not dare to disclose ourselves by sounding the half moon, and if half of them were lost, I still would not allow it blown; he might see if he could assemble the men by whistling or signalling."