Bunker Hill

“fire the town,” and in short order, Charlestown’s several hundred buildings, tinder dry after several weeks with little rain, had erupted into flame. “A dense column of smoke rose to great height,” Henry Dearborn wrote, “and there being a gentle breeze from the southwest it hung like a thundercloud over the contending armies.” In the hours to come, the cinders of Charlestown were scattered as far as Chelsea, more than two miles away.
    As the inferno raged to the west, General Howe turned to address his troops one last time. “I shall not desire one of you to go a step farther than where I go myself at your head,” he assured them. “Remember, gentlemen, we have no recourse to any resources if we lose Boston but to go on board our ships, which will be very disagreeable to us all.” Howe’s artillery of six fieldpieces, two light twelve-pounders, and two howitzers were lined up along the crest of Morton’s Hill, and in addition to the growing plume of smoke, “innumerable swallows” could be seen dancing above the heads of the British soldiers.
    —
    Prescott estimated that there were only about 150 men left in the redoubt. They were exhausted, hungry, and nearly driven mad with thirst. The fort’s earthen walls, once moist and cool, had been baked dry by the sun. With the regulars about to begin the assault, Prescott’s men were desperate for assistance from the mass of provincials they could see lingering around General Putnam on Bunker Hill. “Our men turned their heads every minute to look on the one side for reinforcements,” remembered Captain Bancroft.
    But none were forthcoming—except for one man, who could be seen making his solitary way toward the redoubt. Instead of wearing a brown floppy hat or red worsted wool cap like the rest of them, he was, a witness remembered, “dressed . . . like Lord Falkland, in his wedding suit.” It was Dr. Joseph Warren, and the “soldiers received him with loud hurrahs.”
    Since leaving his apprentice on the outskirts of the Charlestown Common, Warren had crossed the Neck, and after borrowing a musket from a doctor who was tending to the wounded at a tavern on the west side of Bunker Hill, he’d found General Putnam. Warren made it clear that despite recently being named a major general he’d come not to command but to serve as a volunteer. He also wanted to know where the fighting was going to be the hottest, and Putnam had directed him to the redoubt.
    Like Putnam before him, Prescott asked whether Warren was to act as his superior officer. “No, Colonel,” he replied. “But to give what assistance I can, and to let these damn rascals see that the Yankees will fight.”
    —
    From the start, the British advance was plagued by unanticipated complications. Many of the cannon had been provided with the wrong size of cannonballs; as a last resort, the artillerymen took to firing alternative projectiles—clusters of smaller balls known as grapeshot—but the mix-up stalled the initial momentum of the attack. The worst impediment came, however, from the terrain. Most of the hay on the hillside had not yet been harvested, requiring that the regulars march through a sea of waist-high grass that concealed the many rocks, holes, and other obstacles that lurked at the soldiers’ feet. The fences that Captain Knowlton and his men had cannibalized to such good effect in building the rail fence provided an unforeseen hindrance to the regulars’ advance. Every hundred yards or so, the soldiers encountered yet another one of these solidly built fences, requiring that they pause to take down the rails before they could push on ahead. Adding to the soldiers’ torment was the heat of the afternoon sun, augmented by the swirling bonfire of Charlestown and the smothering warmth of their wool uniforms. It also didn’t help matters that they were loaded down with packs and other equipment.
    But gradually, Howe’s and Pigot’s long, increasingly straggling lines of soldiers made their inevitable way up the hill as beside them a city burned and above them an army waited. For those watching in Boston, the regulars made for an unforgettable sight, what John Burgoyne called “a complication of horror and importance beyond anything that ever came to my lot to be witness to.” The movement of the troops amid the unceasing cannonade from the ships and the hilltop battery were impressive, but it was the destruction of “a large and noble town” that