THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD
Meantime, the British troops numbering eight hundred men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, were on their way to Lexington. But before they had gone far they were made aware, by the ringing of church-bells, the firing of signal-guns, the beating of drums, and the gleaming of beacon-fires from the surrounding hilltops, that their secret was out, and that the minutemen knew what was going on.
Monument on Lexington Common Marking the Line of the Minutemen.
Surprised and disturbed by these signs that the colonists were on the alert, Colonel Smith sent Major Pitcairn ahead with a picked body of troops, in the hope that they might reach Lexington before the town could be completely aroused. He also sent back to Boston for more men.
The British commander would have been still more disturbed if he had known all that was happening, for the alarm-signals were calling to arms thousands of patriots ready to die for their rights. Hastily wakened from sleep, men snatched their old muskets from over the door, and bidding a hurried good-by to wife and children, started for the meeting-places long before agreed upon.
Just as the sun was rising, Major Pitcairn marched into Lexington, where he found forty or fifty minutemen ready to dispute his advance.
“Disperse, ye rebels; disperse!” he cried, riding up. But they did not disperse. Pitcairn ordered his men to fire, and eighteen minutemen fell to the ground.
Before the arrival of Pitcairn the British officers who had captured Revere and Dawes returned with them to Lexington, where, commanding Revere to dismount, they let him go. Running off at full speed to the house where Samuel Adams and John Hancock were staying, he told them what had happened, and then guided them across the fields to a place of safety.
Leaving the shocked and dazed villagers to collect their dead and wounded, Colonel Smith hastened to Concord. He arrived about seven in the morning, six hours after Doctor Prescott had given the alarm.