Thus it enumerates the companies which fought the battle in detail, the result running up several hundred more than the total he gives.  The early and official accounts are in every way more worthy of credence; but the point is settled beyond dispute by Hill’s narrative.  Hill was one of the four hundred men with Williams, and he expressly states that after the junction at the Cowpens the force, from both commands, that started out numbered nine hundred and thirty-three.  The question is thus definitely settled.  Most of the later accounts simply follow the statements Shelby made in his old age.] The British forces were composed in bulk of the Carolina loyalists—­troops similar to the Americans who joined the mountaineers at Quaker Meadows and the Cowpens [Footnote:  There were many instances of brothers and cousins in the opposing ranks at King’s Mountain; a proof of the similarity in the character of the forces.]; the difference being that besides these low-land militia, there were arrayed on one side the men from the Holston, Watauga, and Nolichucky, and on the other the loyalist regulars.  Ferguson had, all told, between nine hundred and a thousand troops, a hundred and twenty or thirty of them being the regulars or “American Volunteers,” the remainder tory militia. [Footnote:  The American official account says that they captured the British provision returns, according to which their force amounted to eleven hundred and twenty-five men.  It further reports, of the regulars nineteen killed, thirty-five wounded and left on the ground as unable to march, and seventy-eight captured; of the tories two hundred and six killed, one hundred and twenty-eight wounded and left on the ground unable to march, and six hundred and forty-eight captured.  The number of tories killed must be greatly exaggerated.  Allaire, in his diary, says Ferguson had only eight hundred men, but almost in the same sentence enumerates nine hundred and six, giving of the regulars nineteen killed, thirty-three wounded, and sixty-four captured (one hundred and sixteen in all, instead of one hundred and thirty-two, as in the American account), and of the tories one hundred killed, ninety wounded, and “about” six hundred captured.  This does not take account of those who escaped.  From Ramsey and De Peyster down most writers assert that every single individual on the defeated side were killed or taken; but in Colonel Chesney’s admirable “Military Biography” there is given the autobiography or memoir of a South Carolina loyalist who was in the battle.  His account of the battle is meagre and unimportant, but he expressly states that at the close he and a number of others escaped through the American lines by putting sprigs of white paper in their caps, as some of the whig militia did—­for the militia had no uniforms, and were dressed alike on both sides.  A certain number of men who escaped must thus be added.] The forces were very nearly equal in number.  What difference there was, was probably