On May 16, 1771, the Battle of Alamance was fought between colonial militia, mainly from the eastern part of the province and commanded by Governor William Tryon, and the Regulators, a band of frontier dwellers who had risen in arms against corrupt practices in local government. On May 14, Tryon’s force of 1,100 men camped on Alamance Creek in the heart of Regulator country, while some 2,000 Regulators had already gathered five miles southwest, armed with old muskets and makeshift weapons. The two sides exchanged messages, with Tryon demanding immediate and complete surrender and the Regulators petitioning for reforms, but negotiations failed. On the morning of May 16, Tryon marched along the old Hillsboro-Salisbury road toward the Regulators, halted after about three miles for a practice battle formation, then continued until his men came within half a mile of the opposing force and formed battle lines at ten o’clock. He again offered surrender terms as the militia advanced and halted three hundred yards away, but the Regulators rejected them. An attempted exchange of prisoners also failed, and, fearing delay, Tryon ordered his troops closer and sent a final warning that he was ready to open fire. The Regulators replied, “Fire, fire and be damned.” The battle began with artillery from the governor’s six swivel guns and two brass field pieces, followed by concentrated musket fire from the militia. The Regulators answered with repeated volleys from their mixed weapons, held their ground in the open for half an hour, then fell back to woods at the edge of the clearing. Fighting continued for another hour and a half until Regulator fire weakened, whereupon Tryon ordered a charge that drove them from their positions and pursued them half a mile before turning back to camp on Alamance Creek. Wounded militia and many wounded Regulators were brought into camp and treated by the governor’s physicians. Regulator losses were nine killed, upward of two wounded, and between twenty and thirty captured; Tryon’s force lost nine killed and sixty-one wounded. On May 17, James Few, one of the captured Regulators, was hanged as an outlaw after refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the king. The battle decisively crushed the Regulators, but their campaign for reforms had effects for many years: in 1776 many of those reforms were embodied in the North Carolina constitution, and newspapers across the colonies publicized the battle widely, with papers in Boston and Philadelphia citing the Regulators as martyrs and using their example to encourage the American cause on the eve of the Revolution.