Washington could not have won the war alone, and the set captures the three Continental generals most often credited with shaping its outcome alongside him. Lafayette was nineteen when he sailed from Bordeaux in 1777 with a commission paid out of his own pocket and an unshakeable conviction that the American cause was his own; Washington adopted him as a kind of surrogate son, and the young Marquis returned the regard for the rest of his life. Nathanael Greene — Rhode Island Quaker iron-master turned self-taught strategist — became the indispensable second in command. He served as Quartermaster General through the worst of Valley Forge, took the broken southern army from Horatio Gates after Camden in 1780, and ran Cornwallis from the Carolinas to Yorktown in a sixteen-month campaign of measured fight-and-withdrawal. "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again," Greene wrote his wife from North Carolina — the strategic doctrine of the southern war in nine words. The two of them, with Washington, are the command core the set is built around.

This Tradition of London set is a six-piece Continental command group, hand-cast in white metal at 54mm and finished in the gloss enamel that marks Tradition's classic toy soldier line. The five figures stand together as if at a headquarters parley: an officer at left grounds a spontoon, the half-pike that marked a company officer of the Continental Line attached as an aide; Washington stands at center in his personal buff and blue with the pale blue sash of commander-in-chief across his chest; Lafayette and Greene flank him in the blue coats and buff small-clothes of major-general's rank, each with a sword and the laced waistcoat the officers of senior rank purchased at their own expense; a fifth figure carries a map under his arm in the role of staff secretary or aide-de-camp. The camp fire accessory rests at the center of the group — the practical detail that situates the conference in a winter camp or evening halt rather than on a parade ground. The set sits naturally beside the Regal Enterprises Knox's Artillery — Knox would have been a fourth senior figure in any complete Continental command tableau — and pairs with W. Britain matte figures like the Continental Line officer standing at ease for collectors building a full headquarters scene across manufacturers.

Set Number: 250 / Tradition of London — Soldiers for Collectors / 54mm scale / white metal / gloss enamel / 5 figures + camp fire accessory