Recommended......................................*

 

-      At times Marion must have seemed a martinet.  But his rationale was simple: "Whenever any part of duty is neglected or done in a slovenly manner, though ever so minute, it tends to destroy disciple entirely."

-Marion preferred the loyalty of a few good men to the fickleness of many uncommitted ones.

-He possessed a strong mind, improved by its own reflections and observations, not by books or travel.

-As Lee would later write, "Marion and Lee were singularly tender of the lives of their soldiers; and preferred moderate success, with little loss, to the most brilliant enterprise, with the destruction of many of their troops."

-On March 21, while camped at Trapier's Plantation just outside Georgetown, Watson complained about Marion's style of warfare.  "They will not sleep and fight like gentlemen," Watson told the plantation owner, "but like savages are eternally firing and whooping around us at night, and by day waylaying and popping at us from behind every tree."  Had he heard this indictment, Marion might have taken it as a compliment.

*Assuming you like your wars fought by small numbers, with often conflicting loyalties, via hide-and-seek on horses, over a vast territory, punctuated by small skirmishes.