Paul Revere's Ride

by David Hackett Fischer

  Wilson placed his men behind a barn on the Hartwell farm, very close to the road. They waited until the long red column approached, then fired directly into the van with deadly effect. As the Americans reloaded, a flanking party of British grenadiers caught the militia from behind. Captain Wilson was killed, and Lieutenant Job Lane was severely wounded. With the Bedford men was Woburn militiaman Daniel Thompson, who fired into the column from the barn, then ducked back to reload. A grenadier came around the corner of the building, and shot him. Another Woburn man shot the grenadier, who fell dying in the Hartwell yard. 80

  Beyond the Hartwell farm the British force continued to lose men to long range fire and skirmishes around homes by the side of the road. The column was now approaching the boundary between Lincoln and Lexington. To the south, the terrain was low and wet. North of the road was a pasture studded with large granite boulders. Beyond it was a steep rocky hillside, part of a five-acre woodlot that belonged to the farm of Tabitha Nelson. The road headed directly toward the hill, then veered south around it. 81

  Waiting on the hill was a band of Yankee militia with a score to settle. They were Captain John Parker’s Lexington company— many of the same farmers who had stood on their town green. Parker had rallied them after their shattering defeat and brought them back into combat—an extraordinary feat of leadership. He led his men westward to the Lexington-Lincoln line, and some of his company took positions in the granite-strewn pasture on the north side of the road just within the town of Lincoln. They found cover in drainage ditches and large stone outcroppings, alongside the Lincoln militia. As the British column approached, the New England men fought stubbornly from behind the great gray boulders. Lincoln’s William Thorning, a crack shot, opened fire from a drainage ditch, retreated to the cover of a large rock, and fired again, killing two Regulars. A British flanking party cleared the ground, but at a cost. More men were killed and wounded. 82

  The Bloody Curve was a series of engagements at two sharp turnings in the highway on wooded ground. This 19th centurv photograph by Alfred Hosmer shows the intersection of the Bedford Road (left) and the portion of the highway that is now called Virginia Road. The militia were in the trees to the left and right. (Concord Free Public Library)

  Just ahead, Captain Parker and the rest of his Lexington company waited on the rocky hill where the road entered their town. Some of the men wore bloody bandages over stiffening wounds they had received that morning. Others were blackened by powder smoke. They knelt grimly on their steep wooded hillside behind large granite boulders as the Regulars approached. 83

  The Lexington men held their fire until the van of the British column came very close to their position. Then, as Colonel Smith himself rode up, Parker ordered them to fire. Smith tumbled out of the saddle, painfully wounded in the thigh. Captain Parsons, the last unwounded officer of the 10th Foot, was hit. So great was the shock of this attack that the British column stopped for a moment, compressing on the road. Major Pitcairn came galloping up, and sent the British infantry charging forward up the rocky hillside, driving Parker’s militia away from the road. Now the Americans began to take casualties. Lexington’s Jedidiah Munroe, wounded in the morning, was killed. The American ambush was cleared, but more Regulars were dead and wounded on a rocky hillside that is remembered as Parker’s Revenge. 84

  A few hundred yards beyond, to the north of the road lay yet another wooded hill, so steep that it was called the Bluff. Major Pitcairn sent his own reserve of British Marines to clear it, which they did with high courage, in an action that explains why the Marines had the heaviest losses of all the British units engaged this day. 85

  The Marines took the hill, only to discover that one more wooded purgatory lay just beyond, at a place called Fiske’s Hill. Here another New England regiment came into action from the east, led by a company from Cambridge under Captain Samuel Thatcher. The New England men waited patiently as the British column marched toward them. One watched in fascination as “an officer, mounted on an elegant horse, and with a drawn sword in his hand, was riding backwards and forwards, commanding and urging the British troops.” The Americans held their fire until the Regulars were in range. Then, an eyewitness recalled, “A number of Americans behind a pile of rails, raised their guns and fired with deadly effect. The officer fell and the horse took fright, leaped the wall and ran directly towards those who had killed his rider.” 86

  It was Major Pitcairn himself who had gone down, not killed as the American believed, but badly shaken in his fall. His horse bolted with Pitcairn’s two elegant Scottish pistols secured to the saddle. The Marine officer struggled to his feet, bound up an injured arm, and returned to his command. At least five British Regulars were left dead or dying in the road.

  The plight of the British force was growing desperate. Colonel Smith himself had been wounded and Pitcairn injured. Many company officers had been hit. A large proportion of the men had been wounded, and the rest were utterly exhausted. The entire force was nearly out of ammunition, and the Americans were up with them again, firing from every side.

  Men on both sides were very tired, and consumed with thirst. Vicious fire-fights broke out by wells along the road. At the Fiske house, a British soldier ran to drink from the well at the same moment that James Hayward of the Acton company came limping up with the same idea in mind. The Regular raised his musket and cried, “You are a dead man.” Hayward took aim and said, “So are you.” Both fired at the same instant. The Regular was killed. Hay-ward was mortally wounded by splinters from his own powder horn. The two men fell side by side at the Fiske farm, while other soldiers drank quickly from the cooling waters of the well and returned to the fighting. 87

  At Fiske Hill the British column began to come apart. The officers lost control of their men. Some simply sat down by the side of the road and waited for the end. Noah Eaton of Framingham came upon a Regular with an empty musket. Eaton took aim and said, “Surrender or die.” The British soldier surrendered—not knowing that Eaton’s musket was also empty, or perhaps no longer caring. 88

  Lexington militiaman Joshua Simonds captured two British soldiers. The first was a straggler who had somehow become separated from his unit, and was walking alone on the Boston Road. Simonds later recalled that this soldier was Irish, and surrendered without a fight. Many of the Regulars had been recruited in Ireland. As the day wore on, they were beginning to think that this developing disaster was yet another “English war, and an Irish fight.”

  Later, Simonds captured a musician, a boy fifer whose coat was closely buttoned, and fife projecting from it. This English fifer was but a child, and begged Simonds not to kill him. The militiaman discovered that the coat had been buttoned to staunch a fatal wound. The child was taken to an American farmhouse, and died a few days later. 89

  Major Pitcairn armed himself with this elegant brace of silver-mounted Scottish pistols. On the retreat from Concord he secured them to his saddle for safekeeping. Near Fiske Hill he was unhorsed and his mount was captured by an American militiaman, who sold the pistols. They were later given to the Lexington Historical Society, where they may be seen today.

  The Regulars in the van began to run forward in a desperate effort to escape their tormenters. The wounded dropped behind, and British flanking parties were no longer able to keep up. De Berniere, one of the few officers still unwounded, remembered, “When we arrived within a mile of Lexington, our ammunition began to fail, and the light companies were so fatigued with flanking that they were scarce able to act, and a great number of wounded scarce able to get forward, made a great confusion; Col. Smith (our commanding officer) had received a wound through his leg, a number of officers were also wounded.” De Berniere remembered that “we began to run rather than retreat in order. The whole behaved with amazing bravery but little order. We attempted to stop the men and form them two deep, but to no purpose, the confusion increased rather than lessened.” 90

  The retreat continued across a swale of open land (
now the roadbed of Route 128) to another elevation called Concord Hill. The few officers left in the vanguard formed a line across the road, facing backward toward the column, and tried desperately to force their men into ranks. De Berniere wrote, “At last after we got to Lexington the officers got to the front and presented their bayonets, and told the men if they advanced they should die. Upon this, they began to form under heavy fire.” 91

  The end was very near for these brave men. Behind them were growing numbers of angry American militia. Ahead was Lexington Green, where they could expect no mercy. The van of the column came round a bend in the road, and Lexington’s meetinghouse came into view in the distance. Some of the officers were thinking of surrender. “We must have laid down our arms, or been picked off by the rebels at their pleasure,” said Lieutenant Barker, the only officer still unscathed in the first three companies. 92

  Suddenly Barker was amazed to hear a wild cheer from the the weary, bleeding, smoke-stained men at the head of the column. He ran forward, and in the distance he saw one of the happiest sights of his young life—a full brigade of British infantry drawn up in line of battle on the heights east of the Lexington Common, with artillery at the ready. Near the center of the British line, a cannon boomed. A small black roundshot went soaring through the air, crashed into Lexington’s wooden meetinghouse, and came out the other side in a cloud of flying splinters.

  Smith’s shattered force of Regulars stumbled forward in disorder toward the guns of their rescuers, while American militia came after them. On the hill ahead, a panoply of scarlet officers studied the scene with amazement. Their commander, Brigadier the Right Honorable Hugh Earl Percy, wrote later to his father the Duke of Northumberland, “I had the happiness… of saving them from inevitable destruction.” 93

  A CIRCLE OF FIRE

  Lord Percy’s Long Retreat

  We retired for 15 miles under an incessant fire, which like a moving circle surrounded and followed us wherever we went.

  —Lord Percy, April 20, 1775

  GENERAL GAGE expedition even before it left Boston. On the night of its departure, he took the precaution of alerting Lord Percy’s 1st Brigade. These were some of his best troops—three crack regiments of British infantry, and a battalion of Royal Marines. He ordered them to be under arms at four o’clock the next morning, and ready to march if needed. 1

  What followed was a chapter of accidents, typical of the hierarchical and highly secretive system of communications in the British command. As always, General Gage acted with obsessive secrecy. His orders to Percy’s brigade were prepared in a single copy and sent in a sealed letter, personally addressed to the one man who needed to know—the brigade major, Captain Thomas Moncrieffe. 2

  That unlucky officer was not in his quarters when the order arrived. The letter was left with a servant, who put it on a table and forgot to tell his master. Captain Moncrieffe returned early in the morning, perhaps less alert than usual, and tumbled into bed without discovering the message. At four o’clock, the hour when the troops had been ordered to assemble, he was blissfully asleep and the brigade was still in barracks. 3

  A little past five o’clock, General Gage was rudely awakened by a galloper from Colonel Smith, bearing a message that the countryside was alarmed and reinforcements would be needed. The unfortunate Captain Moncrieffe was summoned from his slumbers, and at six o’clock the brigade was ordered to muster in marching order. The men came pouring out of their quarters, still only half awake, frantically buttoning their uniforms and tugging at their equipment. They formed up in the streets of Boston, shuffling into a long column that stretched halfway across the town.

  It was seven o’clock by the time they assembled, and the people of Boston were going about their morning business. Young Harrison Gray Otis, then nine years old, was on his way to Boston Latin School. He turned a corner and was amazed to find the street filled with British soldiers. Many years later Otis remembered that “in the morning, about seven, Percy’s brigade was drawn up, extending from Scollay’s Building through Tremont Street nearly to the bottom of the Mall, preparing to take their march for Lexington. A corporal came up to me as I was going to school, and turned me off to pass down Court Street which I did, and came up School Street to the school-house. It may well be imagined that great agitation prevailed, the British line being drawn up only a few yards from the school-house door. As I entered the school, I heard the announcement of deponite libros, and ran home for fear of the Regulars.” 4

  By 7:30, Percy’s brigade was ready to march—all except the British Marines, who were unaccountably absent. An hour passed, while the army waited restlessly in its long ranks. Finally an aide was sent to find the missing battalion. He discovered that once again the British chain of communications had failed, in precisely the same way as before. General Gage’s secret orders for the Marines had been sent in another sealed letter, personally addressed to the battalion commander. This officer was Major John Pitcairn, who at that moment was otherwise engaged on Lexington Green. The orders lay unopened in his room, awaiting his return. This double failure of communications in General Gage’s command delayed the assembly of the brigade by nearly five hours—the difference between life and death for many a British soldier on the Lexington Road. 5

  While the Marines assembled in high haste, the brigade commander moved easily among his troops. Lord Hugh Percy was one of the most able officers in Gage’s army. He was a figure of high importance in our story—both for what he did, and who he was, and how he personified the clash of cultures that culminated in the American Revolution.

  Lord Percy was the eldest son of the Duke of Northumberland, and sole heir to one of the greatest estates in England. He held a social rank that has no equivalent in our contemporary world. In 1775, the English aristocracy was very small—fewer than 190 peers in a nation of five million people. But its material powers were great, and growing greater throughout the English speaking world. We sometimes think of 18th-century revolutions as a rising middle class against a declining aristocracy. But the American Revolution (like that in France) was a violent collision between two moving forces—an expansive set of colonial cultures, and an aggressive British aristocracy that was extending its reach throughout the Empire. 6

  This aristocracy laid claim to ancient pedigrees, but many of its members had shallow roots, and were consumed with ruthless ambition in pursuit of wealth and power. The Dukes of Northumberland were a classic case in point. Lord Hugh Percy did not receive his noble name and rank at birth. He had been christened plain Hugh Smithson junior. His father was a mere baronet—a rank below the lowest peer, invented by the Stuarts as a fund-raising device. Hugh Smithson senior was bright, ambitious, and by reputation the handsomest man in England. He courted a lady who by a series of strange dynastic accidents had become heiress to the Percy estates. She agreed to marry him, much against her family’s wishes. Later, through a complex line of descent, the elder Smithson succeeded to the title of Earl of Northumberland. By special act of Parliament he was permitted to take the name and arms of Percy, and by Royal favor he was raised from his earldom to the rank of first Duke of Northumberland (in the “third creation”).

  This armigerous Horatio Alger rebuilt the Percy family’s ruined castles, revived its wasted fortunes, restored its vast estates, planted 20,000 trees in its handsome parks, and developed large deposits of coal on ducal lands into a major source of energy for the industrial revolution. (By the 19th century, the estates of the Duke of Northumberland would yield the fifth largest landed income in England.) 7

  All this was the patrimony of Brigadier Lord Hugh Percy, who was heir to one of the great fortunes in the Western world. At the same time, he was also a highly skilled professional soldier, with military experience far beyond his thirty-two years. Percy was gazetted ensign at the age of sixteen, earned his spurs at the battles of Bergen and Minden, became a lieutenant-colonel at nineteen, and aide-de-camp to King George III at the age of twenty-three. Like his
father he married advantageously—to the daughter of the King’s mentor Lord Bute. When his father was given a dukedom, he gained the courtesy title of Earl Percy, and was also elected to a seat in the British House of Commons.

  Lord Hugh Percy, thirty-two years old, was the eldest son of the Duke of Northumberland, and colonel of the 5th Foot (later named the Northumberland Fusiliers). He commanded the brigade that marched to the relief of the British Concord expedition. (Author’s Collection)

  In 1774 Lord Percy came to Boston as colonel of his own regiment, the 5th Foot, later to be known as the Northumberland Fusiliers. He was not much to look at. Like many of his officers and men, Percy was in chronically poor health. He was a sickly, wasted figure with a thin and bony frame, hollow cheeks, a large protruding nose, receding forehead, and eyes so dim that he was unable to read by candlelight. His body was beginning to be racked by a hereditary gout. 8

  But in colonial Boston he cut a great swath. Lord Percy rented a large house that had once been the residence of the Royal Governor. He bought what he took to be the best riding horse in New England for the princely sum of £450, and imported a matched pair of carriage horses when none of the local stock pleased him. In his dining room he lavishly entertained his brother officers, and made many friends in the garrison and the town. “I always have a table of twelve covers set every day,” he wrote home. 9

  Throughout the army he was immensely popular. In an age of deference, many Englishmen deemed it an honor to be commanded by the eldest son of a Duke—a gallant young gentleman who perfectly personified the virtues of his class. He was honorable and brave, candid and decent, impeccably mannered, and immensely generous with his wealth. When his regiment came to Boston, Lord Percy chartered a ship at his own expense to bring over the wives and children. On another campaign he gave every man in the regiment a new blanket and a golden guinea out of his own pocket. He detested corporal punishment. At a time when other commanders were resorting to floggings and firing squads on Boston Common, he led his regiment by precept and example. When his men went on long marches, Lord Percy left his horse behind and made a point of marching beside them, gout and all. His mother wrote him in 1770, “I admire you for marching with your regiment; I dare say you are the only man of your rank who performed such a journey on foot.” 10