Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer

Author:David Hackett Fischer [Fischer, David Hackett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, History, United States, Historical, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), Art, Painting, Techniques
ISBN: 9780195098310
Google: u_Ow0uAM3EAC
Amazon: 0195098315
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1995-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

—A letter from a gentleman of rank in New England, April 25, 1775 1

IT WAS NEARLY DARK when Lord Percy’s men entered Charlestown. Behind them the sun was setting on the ruins of an empire. A great blood red disc of fire sank slowly into the hills of Lexington, as the long column of British Regulars marched doggedly down to the sea. The militia of New England followed close at their heels. Fighting continued into the twilight, as fresh regiments continued to arrive from distant towns. On Boston’s Beacon Hill, crowds of spectators could see the muzzle-flashes twinkling like fireflies in the gathering darkness. 2

Night had fallen when the last weary British troops crossed over Charlestown Neck and took up a strong position on high ground, supported by the heavy guns of HMS Somerset. American General William Heath studied their deployment and decided that “any further attempt upon the enemy, in that position, would have been futile.” He ordered the militia to “halt and give over the pursuit,” and called a conference of senior officers to make his dispositions for the night. Fearing a British attack, General Heath decided to withdraw the main body of the militia a few miles to the rear. He ordered “centinels to be planted down the neck,” and “patrols to be vigilant in moving during the night.” The rest of the New England troops were sent to Cambridge, and told to “lie on their arms.” 3

Attack was the last thing in British minds. As the rear guard of British Marines passed over Charlestown Neck, Lord Percy looked at his watch and noted that the hour was past seven o’clock. His men were utterly exhausted. The grenadiers and light infantry had not slept for two days. Some had marched forty miles in twenty-one hours. Most had been under hostile fire for eight hours. The soldiers sank gratefully to the soggy ground on the heights above Charlestown, and fell instantly asleep. One British officer, unconscious of the irony, noted that their refuge was a place called Bunker Hill. 4

Later that night a cold rain began to fall, as it did so often after an American battle—as if heaven itself were weeping over the pain that mortal men inflicted on one another. Andover militiaman Thomas Boynton remembered that “there was a smart shower and very sharp lightning and thunder, the most of us wet to the skin.” 5

The many British casualties were ferried across the Charles River to Boston by seamen of HMS Somerset. Ensign De Berniere noted in his diary that “all her boats were employed first in getting over the wounded.” Long rows of broken men with bloody bandages and smoke-stained faces lay quietly at Charlestown’s landing, shivering from the shock of their wounds. One by one, seamen of the Royal Navy lowered them gently into longboats with the special tenderness that men of violence reserve for fallen comrades. 6 A spectator wrote that the boats were busy “till ten o’clock last night bringing over their wounded.

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