The 10th Regiment of Foot — known to the line as "the Tenth" and later carrying the county title of North Lincolnshire — landed at Long Wharf in Boston in 1774 to enforce the Coercive Acts that had closed the port after the Tea Party. On the night of April 18, 1775, the regiment's grenadier and light infantry companies were drawn out of barracks and across the Charles into Cambridge under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, with Major John Pitcairn of the Marines as second in command. The column reached Lexington Green at dawn; the 10th Foot's light infantry fired one of the early volleys that scattered Captain Parker's minutemen and left eight Americans dead. By the time the British force had pushed on to Concord, fought the militia at the North Bridge, and turned for home, the country roads between Lexington and Boston were full of armed New England farmers, and the retreat became a running fight that cost the British 273 casualties over the day. The 10th Foot served on through the war's full northern campaign — Bunker Hill, Long Island, Brandywine, Germantown — and went home with the rest of the army after Yorktown.

This Tradition of London set is an eight-piece line company of the 10th Foot, hand-cast in white metal at 54mm and finished in the gloss enamel of the classic Tradition line. The figures form a battalion-company file at the advance: a sergeant grounds his halberd at the center — the NCO's badge of rank that British line regiments carried into the American war before the musket-and-pike transition of the early 1790s — a corporal flanks him in matching dress without the halberd, and six privates form the line at the charge, bayonets leveled, in the regimental dress of 1775: red coats with the 10th Foot's bright yellow collar, lapels, and cuffs (the facing color the 1768 Royal Warrant assigned to the regiment), white waistcoats and breeches, black tall gaiters above the knee, white cross-belts supporting the cartridge box and bayonet scabbard, and black tricornes edged white. The set is the gloss-painted counterpart to the W. Britain matte battalion company figures of the 43rd Foot battalion marching at support and 43rd Foot standing firing — collectors building a complete redcoat brigade can mix the yellow-faced Tenth with the white-faced 43rd for two regiments on the line. It also pairs across the line with the Regal Minutemen muster set for the same April 19, 1775 morning.

Set Number: 204 / Tradition of London — Soldiers for Collectors / 54mm scale / white metal / gloss enamel / 8 figures (1 sergeant + 1 corporal + 6 privates) / Hand made to order, 2-3 week delivery