XXXVIII. CHAP. Sentinels from the decks of the men of war still cry: "All is well." Putnam also during the night came June among the men of Connecticut on the hill; but he assumed no command over the detachment. 1775. .17. The few hours that remained of darkness hurried away, but not till the line of circumvallation was already closed. As day dawned, the seamen were roused to action, and every one in Boston was startled from slumber by the cannon of the Lively playing upon the redoubt. Citizens of the town, and British officers, and tory refugees, the kindred of the insurgents, crowded to gaze with wonder and surprise at the small fortress of earth freshly thrown up, and "the rebels," who were still plainly seen at their toil. A battery of heavy guns was forthwith mounted on Copp's Hill, which was directly opposite, at a distance of but twelve hundred yards, and an incessant shower of shot and bombs was rained upon the works; but Prescott, whom Gridley had forsaken, calmly considered how he could best continue his line of defence. At the foot of the hill on the north was a slough, beyond which an elevated tongue of land, having few trees, covered chiefly with grass, and intersected by fences, stretched away to the Mystic. Without the aid of an engineer, Prescott himself extended his line from the east side of the redoubt northerly for about twenty rods towards the bottom of the hill; but the men were prevented from completing it "by the intolerable fire of the enemy." Still the cannonade from the battery and shipping could not dislodge them, though it was a severe trial to raw soldiers, unaccustomed to the noise of artillery. Early in the XXXVIII. 1775. 17. day, a private was killed and buried. To inspire CHAP. confidence, Prescott mounted the parapet and walked leisurely backwards and forwards, examining the June works and giving directions to the officers. One of his captains, perceiving his motive, imitated his example. From Boston, Gage with his telescope descried the commander of the party. "Will he fight?" asked the general of Willard, Prescott's brother-inlaw, late a mandamus councillor, who was at his side. "To the last drop of his blood," answered Willard. As the British generals saw that every hour gave fresh strength to the intrenchments of the Americans, by nine o'clock they deemed it necessary to alter the plan previously agreed upon, and to make the attack immediately on the side that could be soonest reached. Had they landed troops at the isthmus as they might have done, the detachment on Breed's Hill would have had no chances of escape or relief. The day was exceedingly hot, one of the hottest of the season. After their fatigues through the night, the American partisans might all have pleaded their unfitness for action; some left the post, and the field officers, Bridge and Brickett, being indisposed, could render their commander but little service. Yet Prescott was dismayed neither by fatigue, nor desertion. "Let us never consent to being relieved," said he to his own regiment, and to all who remained; "these are the works of our hands, to us be the honor of defending them." He consented to despatch repeated messengers for reënforcements and provisions; but at the hour of noon no assistance had appeared. His men had toiled all the night long, had broken their fast only with what they had brought XXXVIII. 1775. June 17. CHAP. in their knapsacks the evening before, had, under a burning sky, without shade, amidst a storm of shot and shells, continued their labor all the morning, and were now preparing for a desperate encounter with a vastly superior force; yet no refreshments were sent them, and during the whole day they received not even a cup of cold water, nor so much as a single gill of powder. The agony of suspense was now the greater, because no more work could be done in the trenches; the tools were piled up in the rear, and the men were waiting, unemployed, till the fighting should begin. The second messenger from Prescott, on his way to the head-quarters at Cambridge, was met by Putnam, who was hastening to Charlestown. The brigadier seems to have been justly impressed with the conviction, that the successful defence of the peninsula not only required reënforcements, but that intrenchments should be thrown up on the summit of Bunker Hill. He, therefore, rode up to the redoubt on Breed's Hill, where he did not appear again during the whole day, and asked of Prescott, "that the intrenching tools might be sent off." It was done, but of the large party who took them away, few returned; and the want of a sufficient force, and the rapid succession of events, left Putnam no leisure to fortify the crown of the higher hill. Far different was the scene in Boston. To finished and abundant equipments of every kind, the British troops, though in number hardly more than five thousand effective men, added experience and exact discipline. Taking advantage of high water, the Glasgow sloop of war and two floating batteries had XXXVIII. 17. been moored, where their guns raked the isthmus of CHAP. Charlestown. Between the hours of twelve and one, 1775. by order of General Gage, boats and barges, manned June by oars, all plainly visible to Prescott and his men, bore over the unruffled sheet of water from Long Wharf to Moulton's Point in Charlestown, the fifth, the thirty-eighth, the forty-third, and the fifty-second regiments of infantry, with ten companies of grenadiers, ten of light infantry, and a proportion of field artillery, in all about two thousand men. They were commanded by Major General Howe, who was assisted by Brigadier General Pigot. It was noticed that Percy, pleading illness, let his regiment go without him. The British landed under cover of the shipping, on the outward side of the peninsula, near the Mystic, with a view to outflank the American party, surround them, and make prisoners of the whole detachment. The way along the banks of the river to Prescott's rear lay open; he had remaining with him but about seven or eight hundred men, worn with toil and watching and hunger; he knew not how many were coming against him; his flank was unprotected; he saw no signs of reënforcements; the enemy had the opportunity to surround and crush his little band. "Never were men placed in a more dangerous position." But Howe, who was of a sluggish temperament, halted on the first rising ground, and sent back for more troops. The delay cost him dear. When Prescott perceived the British begin to land on the point east by north from the fort, he made the best disposition of his scanty force, ordering the train of artillery with two field pieces, and the to go CHAP. Connecticut forces under Knowlton, "to pose them." XXXVIII. 1775. June 17. and op. At about two hundred yards in the rear of the still unfinished breastwork, a fence of posts with two rails, set in a low stone wall, extended for about three hundred yards or more towards the Mystic. The mowers had but the day before passed over the meadows, and the grass lay on the ground in cocks and windrows. There the men of Connecticut, in pursuance of Prescott's order, took their station. Nature had provided "something of a breastwork," or a ditch had been dug many years before. They grounded arms and made a slight fortification against musket balls by interweaving the newly mown grass between the rails, and by carrying forward a post and rail fence alongside of the first, and piling the fresh hay between the two. But the line of defence was still very far from complete. Nearer the water the bank was smooth and without obstruction, declining gently for sixty or eighty yards, where it fell off abruptly. Between the rail fence and the unfinished breastwork, the space was open and remained so the slough at the foot of the hill guarded a part of the distance; nearly a hundred yards were left almost wholly unprotected. Brooks, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, one of Prescott's messengers, had no mode of reaching head-quarters but on foot. Having performed the long walk, he found the general anxious and perplexed. Ward saw very clearly the imprudence of risking a battle for which the army was totally unprepared. To the committee of safety which was in session, the committee of supplies expressed its con |