“Absolutely refused,” the hostile commander replied promptly. “Unconditional surrender, or bombardment begins at time stated. If any attempt is made to dismantle works, bombardment will begin at once.”
This was at noon. The hour-hand of the Old South Meeting House clock had not quite touched one, when artillery was passing through Waltham and Newton Centre, and along all the roads crossing the Charles and Neponset Rivers.
There were cavalry and cycle and motor troops on these roads, and trains full of infantry. But always and everywhere was artillery. The sleek guns, pounding along New England’s highways, spoke so wickedly of destructiveness, that they were more terrifying to the population than long columns of heavily armed men.
At Jamaica Plain big howitzers were detrained and taken to the ridge running west by north from the line of the New York and New England railroad. More guns were unloaded in Brookline and posted on the crests from whose tops, 200 feet high, they had all Brookline, all Boston to the bay, and Cambridge and Somerville under their long range fire.[106]
Infantry with field guns occupied Cambridge and Somerville, and laid their ordnance on all points that covered Boston from there. A regiment pushed quickly through Charlestown, took possession of the great grounds of the Navy Yard and stationed a battery of 3-inch field pieces under the Bunker Hill Monument.
The Final Threat
At quarter past three the hostile General sent a message to the American commander at Fort Warren apprising him of the disposition of the guns. “In one quarter of an hour,” said he, “the bombardment will begin. We shall fire at Brookline first.”
The commander walked to the shattered flagstaff of the fort, on whose splintered top the American flag was waving in the wind from the Atlantic. He bared his head, and with his own hand hauled down the colors that he had defended so well.
Five minutes later the colors on all the defenses dropped.