[EARL PERCY MARCHES TO REINFORCE LIEUT.-COL. SMITH.]
As the command of Lieut.-Col. Smith will now rest for a brief period, let us go back to Boston and start with Earl Percy, on his mission to reinforce the former, and consider his delays and difficulties, and why he got no farther than Lexington.
As we have seen, it was between two and three o'clock in the morning when Smith reached Arlington, and becoming alarmed at the increasing attention his soldiers were attracting;—attention that seemed to him hostile, he despatched back to Gen. Gage an urgent request for reinforcements. His messenger should have reached Gage within two hours easily, for to retrace the march was less than six miles by land with an additional half a mile or little more by boat across the Charles River. So Gen. Gage should have had Smith's message by five o'clock, at least. He acted promptly, by ordering the First Brigade, consisting of eight companies of the Fourth, Twenty-third, and Forty-seventh Regiments, under arms, and to these were added two detachments of the Royal Marines to be under Major John Pitcairn. Two pieces of artillery, six-pounders, were also added to the force, and the whole placed under the command of Lord Percy, with the title, for the occasion, of Acting Brigadier-General. His little army numbered about one thousand men.
Hugh, Earl Percy.
Published, Sep.r 30th 1785, by John Fielding, Pater Noster Row.
It was about seven o'clock when the eight companies assembled on Tremont Street, and the line extended from Scollay Square to the lower part of the Common. There they waited for Pitcairn and his Marines, nearly two hours. Finally it dawned upon the mind of General Gage that his orders to that worthy officer might still be lying on his desk unopened, for he had been granted permission to accompany Lieut.-Col. Smith as a volunteer, and perhaps had gone. Such proved to be the case and the two hours were lost. Then another commander for them was selected, and they were in line at nine o'clock.[257] These two hours would have meant Percy's force almost into Concord instead of into Lexington village, and would have made great difference in the results of the day's fighting.
Percy, mounted on a beautiful white horse, headed the column, and they proceeded over Boston Neck, through the present Washington Street, to Roxbury, up the hill to the meeting-house, then to the right, where the old Parting Stone then stood, even as it does to-day. In Roxbury his soldiers excited the attention of a very young patriot, who laughed derisively as the musicians played "Yankee Doodle." Lord Percy noticed him and asked the reason of his mirth. The boy responded: