At Kings Mountain, Colonel Sevier's rugged frontiersmen, known for long-rifle marksmanship and a touchy eagerness for a brawl, did what experienced military men of the day had not expected men armed only with hunting weapons to do: face and defeat soldiers trained to use the bayonet. Three times longhunters from eastern Tennessee charged up the mountainside. Once, then twice, Tories wielding 17-inch-long bayonets chased them back down. Somehow Sevier's patriots found the courage to stop running, turn around, and go back up against that fearsome cold steel one last time. Every man at Kings Mountain, Whig or Tory, knew that only six weeks earlier patriot militias had been overwhelmed at Camden, South Carolina, where well-drilled Crown troops had used standard European tactics and cold steel to send the Whigs running for their lives.