However, what Gage got that night was precisely the opposite. Alerted by Patriot spies from Boston, the Massachusetts countryside rose up against the intrusion of royal troops. Sam Adams and John Hancock, two of the most notorious and offensive troublemakers, escaped, and a confrontation with the militia in Lexington's common meadow turned into an unexpected bloodbath . Gage's redcoats managed to destroy some of the supplies hidden in Concord, but the arrival of more militiamen drove them away before they could complete the task. Despite this, the Americans refused to leave them alone, and the rebels furiously and constantly harassed the exhausted redcoats from behind the stone walls and from inside the houses that lined the road as they retreated to safety. of Charlestown. Only strong leadership allowed the British to retreat without running away in panic. The Americans had just spilled the first blood and scored a substantial, if merely symbolic, victory.
The Great American Army
It would be weeks before the rebellion became a revolution. Few Americans then spoke openly of independence from Great Britain, and there in Philadelphia - where the representatives of the Thirteen Colonies had met in what was called the Second Continental Congress – the colonies were going to lose a lot of time before joining Massachusetts. But despite that, New England was at war. Thousands of Massachusetts citizen-soldiers had answered the call to arms as Gage's troops moved into Lexington and Concord on April 19, and not just from the surrounding counties, but from all over the east of the colony; and soon militia units would arrive from Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island to support their beleaguered neighbor. The provincial militias had not come there to start a war, but only to defend their homes, and many of the New Englanders who took up their muskets and marched on Boston that April had every intention of returning home as soon as possible. the British would have learned their lesson. So it was not inevitable that the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord would spark a war, but they did, as influential people made sure it did. One of them was Dr. Joseph Warren, the charismatic young leader of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which was, de facto, the rebellious government of the Bay Colony. Warren wanted a bloody conflict with Britain, and from his point of view the time had come. The thousands of militia encamped around Boston could not be allowed to disband and go back to their fields and workshops; they had to become the first American army .
It was not going to be an easy or simple task. In fact, it was going to be almost impossible create an army out of that scattered mass of amateur soldiers and without frame. One to two weeks after the fighting in Lexington and Concord there would be some 15,000 men crammed into makeshift tent cities around the towns of Roxbury and Cambridge who would need to be fed, clothed, housed and trained, and provide them with officers and organize them into regular military units. Each of these tasks was Herculean in itself, but most daunting was the process of turning the militiamen into obedient soldiers and convincing them that they should stay, that they were needed in the long run. These were hard lessons to learn , because although the stubborn and individualistic New Englanders were brave and determined, none of them saw any reason why they could not return to their homes whenever they wanted, or why they had to obey orders from officers at large. those who did not know.
But the soldiers stayed and, more or less, the “Great American Army”, as it was beginning to be known, held together, getting everything it needed thanks to the enthusiasm and to the unwavering support of Dr. Warren, while thanks to the patience and dedication of General Artemas Ward , from Massachusetts, the highest-ranking officer on the scene, that mass of militiamen huddled around Boston gradually became an army. Ward, corpulent and humorless, was not exactly a gallant or inspiring leader, but he was competent and his patriotism was unquestioned:when word reached him that the redcoats were marching on Concord, he had ridden - very ill and suffering gravely pains–, alone and in a single day, from his house in Shrewsbury to the concentration point in Cambridge.
It would be a while before either army, British or Rebel, would be in a position to do more than sit and wait. Gage's forces were demoralized and probably quantitatively not strong enough to hold Boston and break through the American lines encircling the city by land. Meanwhile, the rebel forces, although numerically superior, were unable to mount an assault on the British redoubt.
There was no way this parity could last indefinitely, and it didn't take long for the British to gain the upper hand. During the spring, the transport ships brought more redcoats from recruiting centers in Britain and Ireland, as well as new leaders, officers as experienced as Gage, but perhaps more aggressive:Generals William Howe ,Sir Henry Clinton andJohn Burgoyne . This injection of fresh blood and new bosses boosted British morale, so much so that by early June everyone assumed the British would go on the offensive.
Plans and counterplans
The initial British plan, as articulated by Gage and his lieutenants in early June 1775, was for an attack on American positions at Roxbury , because as the headquarters of Artemas Ward and the bulk of his forces were in the camps around Cambridge, this town, located at the base of the so-called "Boston Neck" - a narrow isthmus that linked the city with the mainland – was closer, accessible by land and less defended. Furthermore, General John Thomas of Massachusetts, the American commander there, lacked sufficient artillery to defend his position, so a British assault would almost certainly result in a quick and neat victory from the which Gage's forces could sweep north to crush the main army at Cambridge, thus ending the rebellion in two days of fighting...or less.
Boston was full of spies rebels, and even the best kept secret was kept secret for only a short time. In just a few hours the offensive plans leaked to the American headquarters in Cambridge. Ward and his lieutenants already suspected a British attack was imminent, and now they knew exactly where and, more importantly, when it would be:Sunday, June 18, 1775, early in the morning. For the rebel command, knowing these details was of little comfort, since they could do little to withstand a determined assault from Boston, and they also had nothing to reinforce the defenses of Roxbury, since Ward had neither men nor guns to do so. The locality could not be defended. Between a rock and a hard place, General Ward, Dr. Warren and his colleagues decided to make a risky bet:prevent Gage's assault with an offensive of their own that he would probably be unable to defeat the British, but would buy precious time. Orders were issued on Friday, June 16, for Colonel William Prescott to quickly and surreptitiously lead a column of troops from Massachusetts and Connecticut from Cambridge to Charleston Heights, over the Charles River and into Boston itself, that same evening. , taking advantage of the darkness, they would fortify the largest hill in the peninsula, known by the local inhabitants as Bunker Hill . The idea – or the hope – was that the British would see the fort, consider it a threat, and call off the attack on Roxbury. This move was only meant to delay the inevitable, but that was better than giving in to it.
Prescott and his small force – accompanied by the legendary General Israel Putnam of Connecticut, who had fought against the Indians – set out for the heights of Charlestown that same night. Fortunately there was no moon, and the British received no notice of their presence so close to the ships patrolling Boston Harbor. However, Prescott and Putnam decided not to follow Ward's orders to the letter. For some reason, Prescott led his force past Bunker Hill to take possession of a lower elevation called Breed's Hill. , an unfortunate choice as Breed's was lower, smaller and generally less defensible than Bunker Hill; it was significantly further from the Charlestown Isthmus, the vital (and only) escape route to Cambridge from the peninsula; and was within range of the British guns deployed in Boston. It must be added that an American fort on Breed's Hill would present a challenge that the British could not ignore. Prescott's decision to circumvent Ward's orders was to prove fateful.
The Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed's Hill)
Prescott's men got to work around midnight and did not stop until dawn and the British response finished their work, sometime around at 4:00 a.m. on June 17. As soon as the first rays of sunlight revealed the presence of the makeshift redoubt to the attentive British sentinels, their leaders immediately began debating what to do next. Meanwhile, the sloop HMS Lively, which was patrolling the Charles River near the ferry route from Boston to Charlestown, opened fire on the Yankee fort, soon joined by other British warships and batteries stationed in the city itself. . The Battle of Charlestown Heights had just begun. .
For Prescott and Putnam the dawn revealed something even more terrifying than the initial British bombardment:that the rebel position was dangerously vulnerable. They had no artillery worth mentioning, so they couldn't respond to British cannonade, and more importantly, they were very isolated. Although his right flank, anchored in the deserted town of Charlestown, was reasonably secure, his left flank was highly exposed. Furthermore, at that time Prescott's men had been awake for more than 24 hours, and working for more than six, had no food and hardly any water left and were exhausted and terrified by the constant volleys of glowing iron raining down on them from the ships anchored in the port and the battery located at Copp's Hill. However, their boss had no choice but to pressure them to keep digging, even under fire.
The bold rebel advance had caught the British high command off guard, but they quickly recovered. Shortly after the Lively began the bombardment, General Gage met at Clinton House, the British headquarters in Boston, with Howe, Clinton, and Bourgoyne. They were all ready to confront the Americans, but their proposals on how to do it diverged. It was clear that the attack on Roxbury, scheduled for the 18th, would have to be cancelled, and Clinton suggested a daring attack for dawn the next day in which, while one force assaulted the American center head-on, another would secretly move towards his home. rearguard, isolating them from the mainland. However, Gage and Howe objected to a division of forces as too risky, and instead Howe proposed a more conventional solution:an amphibious assault. immediate vicinity of Charlestown to keep the rebels from the front busy while an assault force moved rapidly down the south bank of the Mystic River and surrounded the vulnerable American left flank. Setting up such an operation took time – ships had to be procured and ammunition and supplies distributed – but Howe hoped he could do it at high tide, around 1:00 p.m. that afternoon. Gage, Clinton, and Burgoyne agreed, and the former issued the pertinent orders. As the bombardment of rebel positions continued unabated, the assault force was quickly and efficiently assembled.
It was approximately 1 p.m. when Prescott's men At the Breed's Hill redoubt they sighted an extraordinary sight:a flotilla of boats rowing across the Charles River in neat rows, carrying more than 2,000 redcoats, heading directly from Boston to the Charlestown shore. As soon as they reached it, the men disembarked and soon after the ships returned to the city to pick up reinforcements. American reinforcements were also arriving by then, hurried from their camps by the sound of cannon, who, fortunately, did what Prescott and his men couldn't:complete the defensive line . Shortly thereafter, between the original redoubt and the American left flank on the Mystic River, there was an earthen parapet, a series of small embankments, a log fence, and—covering the riverbank, on the beach—a makeshift stone wall. which had been planted at the last moment by the New Hampshire militia, commanded by the fearsome John Stark.
It was William Howe who took command of the strike force. Shortly after 3:00 p.m. the Redcoats began to execute what should have been a direct if difficult advance, but the British assault collapsed as soon as it began. Although Howe's troops were clearly superior to the rebels they faced, being better trained, experienced in maneuvering large and small units, better equipped and supplied, and accustomed to obeying their officers, some of the who had served in the Seven Years' War, few of the soldiers had combat experience and the troops were so inexperienced like the improvised American militias.
American tradition indicates that the British attacked three times, but in reality there were only two assaults . Initially, Howe avoided assaulting the redoubt directly and instead feinted against the center and right of the rebels to distract their attention while executing the actual attack on the left, where the light infantry, the elite shock troop of the British force, advanced rapidly up the bank of the Mystic River with the intention of breaking through. the weak flank of his enemy and surround him. But the men from Hampshire led by John Stark rushed to meet them, and when the British light infantry came to within 100 feet the American line greeted them with a massive volley of musketry which threw up the attack and sent the survivors fleeing back towards their starting point. Shortly afterward, British officers managed to round them up, reorganize them, and send them back into combat, this time alongside their comrades who were attacking the center of the American position.
The British attack had failed not because of the wrong tactics or because of Howe's ineptitude, but because the infant British troops , especially those that attacked the American left, panicked. Their failure to break through the American lines was due to losing their nerve, something professional European soldiers are not supposed to do; the Americans, on the other hand, turned out to be surprisingly resilient and composed, even under fire.
After this failure, Howe again concentrated his men, reorganized his lines and sent them to attack a second time . A worthy military man, he knew how to read the situation and this time he concentrated on the American right flank – the redoubt at Breed's Hill – and deployed his troops in more dispersed formations, to reduce casualties to a minimum. Still, the Americans stood firm, took careful aim, and waited for the right moment. As the British approached again the muskets roared again, claiming a terrible toll of lives. "They looked too good looking to shoot," one Massachusetts soldier would recall, "but we had to."
Time and numbers were both in Howe's favor, however, and when the rebels ran out of ammunition British regulars broke through the American lines and occupied the parapets of the Breed's Hill redoubt. Nobody ordered the defenders to withdraw, because nobody really had control of the American troops in Charlestown; but the men of New England knew that they had been defeated and began to give ground. The few who desperately held on within the redoubt lost their lives – including Joseph Warren himself, who chose to die like any other soldier despite having been appointed general of the Massachusetts militia just days before.
The victory
The rebels retreated, slowly and reluctantly, towards the Isthmus of Charlestown, Cambridge and Salvation, fighting all the way and pursued by an enemy as triumphant as they were exhausted and punished. Howe, aware of the extent to which the units under his command had suffered, ordered the pursuit to be abandoned when his troops reached Bunker Hill. 
Bunker Hill, as the Battle of Breed's Hill, was a remarkable British victory . Most of the American army was on the run and, although the British army had suffered greatly at the hands of the provincials, it was in possession of the Charlestown peninsula and the American troops at Cambridge, barely two hours' march away, they were more vulnerable than they had been before the battle. There is no doubt that British casualties had been high - Howe had lost about a third of his men - but figures of this magnitude were quite common in an eighteenth-century battle. However, the price was higher than Gage, Howe or Clinton were prepared to take; a quarter of the officer casualties suffered by the British during the entire American Revolutionary War fell on Bunker Hill. For Clinton, who was not given to exaggeration, it was a “costly victory ”. "Another one like this - he wrote later - would have finished us."
That day the American cause was on the verge of disaster . Not only did he lose, in the person of Joseph Warren, one of his most brilliant leaders and statesmen, but he nearly lost most of his army as well. General Ward would later be criticized for his prudence in not sending all of his troops into combat, but it is very likely that this caution saved the army from total destruction. In spite of everything, few Americans saw a defeat in this battle, because the rebels had shown the British, the whole world and themselves that they could face a professional army with certain guarantees, and they were convinced that, if the war continued , they had chances to win it . But the most significant thing about Bunker Hill is that it was a turning point in the history of the American Revolution. Before June 17, 1775, there was still a chance to settle amicably, or at least not to arms, the differences between King George and his disgruntled American colonies; but Bunker Hill changed the situation. The dispute could no longer be resolved merely with words.
Bibliography
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