The causes of the breach between England and the provincials, as the colonists were then called, have been discussed in innumerable histories, and are far too complex to be dealt with in the chronicles of a regiment. It is enough to say here that the dispute began about questions of taxation and trade; the home Government was stupid, slow, and overbearing in its dealings with the provincials, who on their side were petulant, aggressive, and impatient of control. Many of the young Americans believed that as all danger of an attack by France had been removed by the British conquest of Canada, they would be better off as citizens of a republic than as subjects of King George. Both sides were unable to regard the matters at issue from a point of view other than their own: the English Government failed to appreciate the restlessness and desire for expansion natural to young and growing communities of British stock; the provincials were equally unable to realise how slowly new ideas penetrated into the brains of the governing classes at home.
MAP No. 2.
W. & A.K. Johnston Limited, Edinburgh & London.
At the beginning of 1775 the whole of Massachusetts was seething with scarcely veiled rebellion, and though the inhabitants of Boston itself were overawed by the presence of Gage’s troops, the rural population was so hostile that it was unsafe for officers to go any distance into the country without a strong and well-armed escort. The excitement was increased by the action of the provincial Parliament, which, issuing a proclamation urging all able-bodied men to arm themselves and join the militia, began to collect warlike stores at various places in the colony. One of these depôts was at Concord, a village twenty miles from Boston; Gage determined to burn its contents, and on the night of the 18th of April sent a raiding party of eighteen hundred men upon this errand of destruction. Under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith the flank companies—i.e. the grenadiers and light infantry[76]—of the 5th, 10th, XVIIIth, 23rd, 38th, 43rd, 52nd, and 59th regiments started from Boston before midnight, followed a few hours later by Lord Percy with a supporting body composed of the whole of the 4th and 47th regiments, the battalion companies of the 23rd, and ten companies of marines. As it was known that the provincials’ intelligence department was well organised, every precaution was taken to keep the expedition secret; but though the gates of the town had been closed early in the evening and the troops assembled silently at dead of night, their movements were reported by the anti-British faction in Boston, and as they marched through the darkness the ringing of bells and firing of guns warned them that the alarm had been given throughout the countryside. At daybreak the advance-guard ran into a small body of militia at Lexington: there was a parley, followed by a skirmish in which several provincials were hit and the remainder retreated in disorder. Smith lost no time in pushing on to Concord, and while his grenadiers began to demolish the stores some of the light companies guarded the approaches to the village.
So far the raid had been successful, but before describing how rapidly the tables were turned against the troops, the reader must realise with what manner of men Smith’s detachment was about to try conclusions. The original settlers in Massachusetts were of picked British stock; the large majority had left the old country to escape from the restraints imposed by the Stuarts upon liberty of conscience, while others had sought in the New World a freer and more adventurous life than England could afford. The mere fact that these men and women had the courage to leave their homes and friends to face the horrors of the unknown, proved them to be above the average in courage and steadfastness of purpose; and the hard life of pioneers; the incessant struggle with nature in a rude climate; fierce fights with the Red Indian savages, who tortured their captives before killing them; long hunting expeditions in vast and trackless forests; life on lonely farms where every man was thrown on his own resources—all had contributed to develop a race of over-sea Britons as formidable to their enemies as they would have been valuable to the Empire if they had been treated with tact, consideration, and justice. It was not in pioneering alone that the New Englanders had found vent for their restless energy; they had taken part in many of our expeditions during the first half of the eighteenth century. In the disastrous failure at Cartagena a considerable number of New Englanders shared in our defeat, and carried home with them a sorry report of the conduct of the army; a contingent of colonists with justice claimed a large share in the glory of the capture of Louisburg, the French Gibraltar at the mouth of the St Lawrence; and in all the interesting, though now forgotten fights between the English and the French in the country round Lake Champlain American volunteers fought side by side with the regular troops. Thus when the provincials determined to take up arms against England, many of the men who later became generals of note in the republican army had served their apprenticeship to war under the Colours of the mother-country. They had studied our drill; they understood our tactics; they knew the merits and demerits of our soldiers, and very soon learned how best to meet our slow and cumbrous movements with their imperfectly trained volunteers, who at the beginning of the War of Independence had many points in common with the Boers of 1899. Both were ardently patriotic; self-reliant to a fault; wholly undisciplined and obeying no order that did not appeal to them as individuals; both fought in bands of friends and neighbours, not infrequently commanded by the local preacher. In one respect, however, the Boers and the American colonists differed widely. In none of their encounters with the British did the burghers ever hold their ground with determination when things had begun to go badly with them, while at Bunker’s Hill, the first real battle of the revolutionary war, the provincials “fought to a finish” with such grim tenacity that, had our army been engaged, not with a raw militia, but with European regular troops, its dearly bought success would have been extolled as a feat of arms equal to any in the annals of England.
While Smith’s grenadiers were looking for the warlike stores, the light infantry outposts were attacked and driven back into Concord by a very superior force of provincials, who from far and wide had collected to do battle with the red-coats. Boys, full-grown men, greybeards almost tottering to the grave, turned out with splendid enthusiasm from the hamlets of Lincoln, Bedford, Carlisle, and Chelmsford, and surrounding the village like a swarm of bees, set themselves to sting the intruders to death with musketry. Smith determined to retire, and as his column filed out of Concord it became the target of sharpshooters lurking behind houses and log fences and in the woods bordering the rough track that led to Boston. In vain were flanking parties thrown out to keep the enemy at a distance from the main body; the provincials disappeared among the trees and then reappeared farther down the road, using their firearms with deadly effect. The soldiers replied so vigorously that ammunition began to fail them, and as it was impossible to charge a foe who had no formation and whose position was only indicated by isolated puffs of smoke on every side of the column, Smith retreated as fast as possible towards Lexington, losing men at every step. His troops straggled into the village so worn out by hunger and thirst, so demoralised by the biting fire of an almost invisible enemy, that when they saw Lord Percy’s detachment drawn up to protect them they flung themselves on the ground, so badly shaken that the supporting troops had to form square round them. For a time there was a lull in the firing; but when more contingents joined the provincials they re-opened such a vigorous fusilade that Percy decided to lose no time in retiring to Boston, fifteen miles away. He handled with much skill the regiments which had accompanied him, falling back from position to position so steadily as to keep his pursuers in some check; and notwithstanding the ever-increasing volume of fire with which reinforcements from Cambridge and Dorchester enabled the colonists to torment him, by nightfall he succeeded in bringing the shattered column safely into Boston. When the casualty returns were prepared, it was found that this disastrous little expedition had cost us in killed, wounded, and prisoners, nineteen officers and two hundred and fifty of the other ranks—a total to which the flank companies of the XVIIIth contributed two private soldiers killed and four wounded,[77] while the losses of the provincials were rather less than a hundred fighting men. The news of the American success spread like wildfire throughout New England; colony after colony threw in its lot with Massachusetts, and in a few days between sixteen and twenty thousand provincials had assembled for the blockade of Boston, then garrisoned by eleven battalions, all under strength, the weakest of all being the Royal Irish, who on the 25th of June could only muster two hundred and fifty-seven of all ranks. Although there was a British fleet at anchor in the bay, Gage could do nothing until more soldiers arrived from England, and by the time the long-expected reinforcements reached him Boston was closely invested by the Americans.
When the first emigrants to Massachusetts decided on the site of their principal town they selected an almost land-locked bay of the Atlantic, where there was good anchorage and shelter from the winter gales. This bay was almost bridged by two peninsulas, which from opposite shores jutted so far towards each other that at the nearest point they were only five hundred yards apart. Boston was built on the southern of these headlands; on the northern, the village of Charlestown nestled at the foot of an underfeature of the semicircle of low hills enveloping the bay. From Bunker’s Hill, as the southern end of this underfeature was called, Boston lay within cannon-shot; but neither side attempted to occupy this important position until Gage’s reinforcements arrived. Then the British General determined to seize it, but the Americans, acting either by intuition or on information from their spies in Boston, forestalled him. On the evening of the 16th of June twelve hundred men paraded on the common at Cambridge, attended a prayer-meeting, and then started on an enterprise the object of which was known only to the most senior of their officers. The column was commanded by Colonel Prescott, who had so greatly distinguished himself at the capture of Louisburg from the French during the Seven Years’ war that the home Government had offered him a commission in the regular army. Many of the men in his ranks had seen powder burned in earnest, and though their muskets were heavy and unwieldy, they had learned to use them in the pursuit of big game, where an ill-aimed bullet may cost the hunter his life. By the glimmer of dark lanterns Prescott led his men across the isthmus connecting the Charlestown peninsula with the mainland, then crossed Bunker’s Hill and halted on a lower ridge, Breed’s Hill, where he quickly traced the lines of a redoubt. To the provincials digging was no novelty, and they plied pick and shovel so silently and so assiduously that when the day broke the sailors on board the nearest man-of-war saw to their amazement an entrenchment, six feet high, standing where overnight there had been nothing but smooth pasture land. The ships lost no time in opening fire, and the colonists, unable to reply to our big guns, were growing unsteady when Prescott hoisted himself on to the parapet where, under a heavy but ill-directed cannonade he sauntered up and down, giving directions to his working parties and encouraging those men whose courage was not as steadfast as his own. With such an example before them none of the militia flinched; the redoubt grew apace, and was practically finished before the troops in Boston were ready to attack it. But though Prescott had every reason to be satisfied with the temper and industry of his detachment, his situation was a desperate one, and had Gage availed himself of all the resources at his command, not one of the twelve hundred adventurers would have made his way back to the provincial camps. The British had command of the bay; vessels of light draught could sail close to any part of the peninsula; the isthmus, the only possible line of retreat for the Americans, was low, sandy, and less than two hundred yards in width. Gage could have landed behind the entrenchments, and have attacked the Americans simultaneously in front and rear; he could have cut off their retreat and starved them into surrender by fortifying himself upon the isthmus, or by stationing gunboats on either side of it, he could have made it absolutely impassable by cross fire. These schemes were suggested to him, but neither he nor any of the British army were in the mood for scientific fighting, and he decided to regain the prestige lost at Concord and Lexington by a direct frontal attack upon Breed’s Hill.[78] Four complete battalions and twenty flank companies, including the grenadiers and light infantry of the Royal Irish, were rowed across to the Charlestown peninsula—the right wing under General Pigot was composed of the provisional battalion of light infantry, the 38th and 43rd regiments; in the left wing were the provisional battalion of grenadiers, the 5th and 52nd regiments, commanded by General Howe. While the troops were landing on ground well out of range of the Americans the officers had time to study the position they were to carry. It was a strong one: a gentle slope, covered with long grass and cut up by a series of fences calculated to throw advancing troops into disorder, led up to the redoubt and to a breastwork, which ran for a hundred yards towards the enemy’s left. Between the end of this breastwork and the sea was a gap, held by a detachment posted at the foot of Bunker’s Hill, where the only cover was a low stone wall, on which hay was piled to give it additional height. The total frontage occupied was about six hundred yards, defended when the fight began by fifteen hundred men and six pieces of artillery.[79] The British brought between two thousand and two thousand five hundred troops into the field, for in addition to the units already mentioned the 47th regiment and a battalion of Marines came into action during the fight.
At three o’clock in the afternoon Howe, who was the senior officer on the Charlestown peninsula, gave the order to advance. At first the movement was covered by the fire of eight pieces—field-guns and howitzers, which had been ferried across from Boston, but soon the supply of cannon-balls ran out, and as the officer in charge of the artillery reported that a marsh prevented his pushing on to within grape-shot range of the enemy, the infantry for a long time were unsupported by the guns. After the regiments had deployed, the light infantry was directed against the enemy’s left, while the grenadiers, 5th and 52nd, with the 38th and 43rd in second line, were to storm the breastwork and the redoubt. The day was intensely hot, and the soldiers, burdened with heavy knapsacks, three days’ rations, cartouche-boxes, ammunition, bayonets, and muskets weighing fifteen pounds, mounted the hill slowly though in good order. They were allowed to open fire too soon, and their volleys, delivered with perfect precision, were almost ineffective. The provincials wished to reply while their enemies were a long way off, but their leaders knew better than to allow such a waste of ammunition, and while some threatened to cut down the first man who discharged his firelock without orders, others ran along the top of the parapet kicking the muzzles into the air. It was not until the red-coats were within fifty or sixty yards that the Americans were allowed to shoot, and then their well-aimed musketry was so terrible that the whole British line recoiled before it to the bottom of the hill. Howe re-formed his troops, and again led them up the slope, only to be hurled backwards once more with a loss so heavy that the glacis of Breed’s Hill looked more like the breach of a fortress after an assault than an ordinary battlefield. But though they had twice failed to reach the works of the Americans neither Howe nor his men were beaten, and the General had the moral courage to order a third attack, while the soldiers