The Battle of Norwalk and the Challenge of Place

Another one of the raids by Loyalist General William Tryon along the Connecticut coast was the engagement at Norwalk and the burning of the city.  Some 2500 men led by Tryon landed on Saturday evening on July 10, 1779 at Fitch's Point and the area now known as Calf Pasture Beach on the east side of the Norwalk Harbor.  On July 11, a force of Hessians and Loyalists attacked on the west side of the harbor, and Tryon moved northward into Norwalk on the eastern side of the river.  Tryon purportedly watched the burning of the city from a rocking chair on a hill on what is now East Avenue, marked by a stone:

You have to work to get a sense of this engagement.  A marker at Calf Pasture Beach, at least when I visited, required a $10 parking fee to get to it.  The marker for Fitch's Point, another landing spot, was on private property.  It would seem that the point of these historical markers would be to allow people to park nearby and absorb what happened.  Too few places, unless they are official parks, seem to take that into account.  So these spots, where lives were lost and significant things happened, are often inaccessible and ignored.

New Haven and Desolation Warfare

William Tryon, the Loyalist governor of New York and a military commander, espoused a theory of "desolation warfare" that targeted civilian property in an effort to demoralize the population.  It was part of a total war philosophy.  This was not universally accepted by British officers and was opposed by many, though accounts of the war in South Carolina reveal similar attitudes by Banastre Tarleton and even Cornwallis.  Tryon had the opportunity to put this into practice when he was authorized by British General Henry Clinton to conduct raids in Connecticut.  Here, on July 5, 1779 at Black Rock Fort with New Haven in the distance, 18 men under Lieutenant Daniel Bishop fired upon and engaged Tryon's far superior force of 700 that landed at East Haven.  They spiked their guns, attempted to withdraw, and were captured.  Other British forces landed in West Haven and proceeded to New Haven where, per the July 14, 1779 Connecticut Gazette, committed "the brutal ravishment of women, the wanton and malicious destruction of property, the burning the stores on the wharf, and eight houses in East Haven" and "carried away between 30 and 40 of the inhabitants . . . " 

The Connecticut Gazette reported that the Americans lost 27 killed and 19 wounded.

Today we have, among others, the Syrian government exercising a comparable "devastation warfare" approach to civilians, and in Sudan are reports of cluster bombs being used against civilians as well.