THE REPULSE.
From redoubt to river, along the whole sweep of devouring flame, the forms of men wither as in a furnace heat. The whole front goes down. For an instant the chirp of the cricket and grasshopper in the fresh-mown hay might almost be heard; then the groans of the wounded, then the shouts of impatient yeomen who spring forth to pursue, until recalled to silence and duty. Staggering, but reviving, grand in the glory of their manhood, heroic in restored self-possession, with steady step in the face of fire, and over the bodies of the dead, the British remnant renew battle. Again, a deadly volley, and the shattered columns, in spite of entreaty or command, speed back to the place of landing, and the first shock of arms is over.
[pg 299]
A lifetime, when it is past, is but as a moment. A moment, sometimes, is as a lifetime. Onset and repulse. Three hundred lifetimes ended in twenty minutes.
Putnam hastened to Bunker Hill to gather scattering parties in the rear and urge coming reinforcements across the isthmus, where the fire from British frigates swept with fearful energy, but nothing could bring them in time. The men who had toiled all night, and had just proved their valor, were again to be tested.
The British reformed promptly, in the perfection of their discipline. Their artillery was pushed forward nearer the angle made by the breastwork next the redoubt, and the whole line advanced, deployed as before, across the entire American front. The ships-of-war increased their fire across the isthmus. Charlestown had been fired, and more than four hundred houses kindled into one vast wave of smoke and flame, until a sudden breeze swept its quivering volume away and exposed to view of the watchful Americans the returning tide of battle. No scattering shots in advance this time. It is only when a space of hardly five rods is left, and a swift plunge could almost forerun the rifle flash, that the word of execution impels the bullet, and the entire front rank, from redoubt to river, is swept away. Again, and again, the attempt is made to rally and inspire the paralyzed troops; but the living tide flows back, even to the river.
Another twenty minutes,—hardly twenty-five,—and the death angel has gathered his sheaves of human hopes, as when the Royal George went down beneath the waters with its priceless value of human lives.
At the first repulse the thirty-eighth regiment took shelter by a stone fence, along the road which passes about the base of Breed's Hill; but at the second repulse, supported by the fifth, it reorganized, just under the advanced crest of Breed's Hill for a third advance.
It was an hour of grave issues. Burgoyne, who watched the progress from Copp's Hill, says: "A moment of the day was critical."
Stedman says: "A continuous blaze of musketry, incessant and destructive."
Gordon says: "The British officers pronounced it downright butchery to lead the men afresh against those lines."
Ramsay says: "Of one company not more than five, and of another not more than fourteen, escaped."
Lossing says: "Whole platoons were lain upon the earth, like grass by the mower's scythe."
Marshall says: "The British line, wholly broken, fell back with precipitation to the landing-place."
Frothingham quotes this statement of a British officer: "Most of our grenadiers and light infantry, the moment they presented themselves, lost three fourths, and many nine tenths, of their men. Some had only eight and nine men to a company left, some only three, four, and five."
Botta says: "A shower of bullets. The field was covered with the slain."
Bancroft says: "A continuous sheet of fire."
Stark says: "The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold."
[pg 300]
It was, indeed, a strange episode in British history, in view of the British assertion of assured supremacy, whenever an issue challenged that supremacy.
Clinton and Burgoyne, watching from the redoubt on Copp's Hill, realized at once the gravity of the situation, and Clinton promptly offered his aid to rescue the army.
Four hundred additional marines and the forty-seventh regiment were promptly landed. This fresh force, under Clinton, was ordered to flank the redoubt and scale its face to the extreme left. General Howe, with the grenadiers and light infantry, supported by the artillery, undertook the storming of the breastworks, bending back from the mouth of the redoubt, and so commanding the centre entrance.
General Pigot was ordered to rally the remnants of the fifth, thirty-eighth, forty-third, and fifty-second regiments, to connect the two wings, and attack the redoubt in front.
A mere demonstration was ordered upon the American left, while the artillery was to advance a few rods and then swing to its left, so as to sweep the breastwork for Howe's advance.