you could do the search and have the answer faster than I can find it and post it...I will anyway, though...hang on..Do you have a link to back up that claim?3% of the colonists (actually fighting) was all it took to beat the best army in the world in 1776.
The British lost the war of Independence for the same reason Bush jr lost the Iraq war.
It was simply way too expensive to impose a military "peace" on a place that refused to be occupied by a foreign power.
not saying it's not true, but that was never covered in any history book I've read.
Derideo_Te
I can't find my original source, so my number is questionable...sorry...
but there's this excellent site...using these numbers you could extrapolate with the total population divided by 1/2 (women)...
Myths of the American Revolution | History | Smithsonian
Still, as debate continued, skeptics—especially within Britain’s army and navy—raised troubling questions. Could the Royal Navy blockade the 1,000-mile-long American coast? Couldn’t two million free colonists muster a force of 100,000 or so citizen-soldiers, nearly four times the size of Britain’s army in 1775? Might not an American army of this size replace its losses more easily than Britain? Was it possible to supply an army operating 3,000 miles from home? Could Britain subdue a rebellion across 13 colonies in an area some six times the size of England? Could the British Army operate deep in America’s interior, far from coastal supply bases? Would a protracted war bankrupt Britain? Would France and Spain, England’s age-old enemies, aid American rebels? Was Britain risking starting a broader war?
After the Continental Congress convened, King George III told his ministers that “blows must decide” whether the Americans “submit or triumph.”
Some 100,000 men served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Probably twice that number soldiered as militiamen, for the most part defending the home front, functioning as a police force and occasionally engaging in enemy surveillance. If a militia company was summoned to active duty and sent to the front lines to augment the Continentals, it usually remained mobilized for no more than 90 days.