Best way to redirect site in subdirectory to root?

Question

The only way I managed to get this to work was with the following in the .htaccess of the /site/ directory:

RewriteBase \
RedirectMatch 301 ^/site/$ /$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/site/(?!wp-admin/|wp-content/|wp-includes/)(.*)$ /$1

Whilst I am aware that RewriteRule ^site/ /$1 [R=301,NC,L] should have worked, and that RewriteRule ^site/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L] should have also worked (according to various articles I read), I had no luck with these (and no server error).

My host is Hostgator.com – in case this result is relevant to their particular configuration (which I doubt).