Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Decades later, a woman made an extraordinary claim to the son of Warren’s brother John. Like his father and his uncle, Edward Warren was a doctor, and one of his patients told of how she had been born in Dedham around the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill and that Joseph Warren had been her mother’s doctor. The woman claimed that on the morning of the battle, Warren visited her mother in Dedham “and finding she had no immediate occasion for his services, told her that he must go to Charlestown to get a shot at the British and he would return to her in season.” We’ll never know for sure whether or not Warren visited Sally Edwards on June 17, but we do know that eleven days after the battle, Dr. Nathaniel Ames delivered her a baby girl, which meant that Edward Warren’s patient might have been Joseph Warren’s illegitimate daughter.

  Once Warren and Townsend had shared a cup of chamomile tea in Hastings House, they set out for Charlestown. Townsend later remembered that Warren was dressed exquisitely in “a light cloth coat with covered buttons worked in silver, and his hair was curled up at the sides of his head and pinned up.” All signs of his headache had vanished, and “he was very cheerful and heartily engaged in preparations for the battle.” They were approaching Charlestown Neck when they learned that several wounded provincial soldiers had been taken to a nearby house. Warren told his apprentice that he “had better remain and dress their wounds,” and with only a cane in his hand, Warren continued walking toward Bunker Hill.

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  William Howe was a handsome man, about six feet tall, with dark hair, black eyes, and a majestic reticence that did not prevent him from having a very good time when not on the battlefield. Politically he was a Whig, and as a member of Parliament he had spoken against the advisability of a war with Britain’s American colonies. But that was before King George had requested his presence in Boston, with the understanding that he would be next in line should General Gage’s services no longer be required.

  When it came to maneuvering infantry regiments across a battlefield, Howe was considered a master tactician. Over the course of the last five years, he had introduced a new system by which light infantry companies increased the mobility of the British army, and just a few months before he had been stationed on the Salisbury Plain near Stonehenge, conducting drills. In an age before the machine gun, lines of infantry could march boldly up to the enemy and once within musket range—about a hundred yards or so—charge ahead with their seventeen-inch-long bayonet blades thrust forward. The trick was to get the enemy to fire early enough that the first volley did minimal damage while the terrifying sights and sounds of a line of bellowing soldiers emerging from the powder smoke made the opposing force turn and run. One favorite tactic was to make it look as if you were launching an attack on one segment of the line when you were really concentrating your forces in an entirely different direction. That was what Howe hoped to do today.

  Over on the left, General Pigot was to lead his men in a great show against the redoubt and breastwork while on the right Howe focused on the rail fence. But the real work was to be done by the light infantry on the beach beside the Mystic River. With the famous Welch Fusiliers leading the way, a long column of light infantry was to overwhelm whatever resistance they encountered on the beach and, in Howe’s words, “attack them in flank.” Unfortunately, Howe had not been able to perform any significant reconnaissance of this crucial portion of the battlefield. Ever since the loss of the Diana, Admiral Graves had been reluctant to expose his fleet to unnecessary risk, and he had been unwilling to move any of his ships up the Mystic River. Not only could a vessel on the Mystic have provided Howe with some useful eyes and ears, her cannons could have directed a devastating stream of fire on the rear of the rebel line. Graves’s concerns about losing one of his ships in the shallows of the river did not apply to the gunboats, and Howe requested that they be rowed around the peninsula from the Charlestown milldam to the Mystic River. The tide, however, was against them, and by the time they took up their positions on the Mystic, the battle was essentially over.

  Since the right-most column of light infantry was hidden behind the bank of the Mystic River, this critical movement was to remain largely unappreciated by those watching in Boston, while all attention was directed to the forces in the middle and on the left, where Howe and Pigot each had a line of ten companies, or about three hundred soldiers, with a second line following close behind. According to John Burgoyne, then standing on Copp’s Hill, the deployment of these troops was “exceedingly soldierlike; in my opinion it was perfect.”

  But just as the attack was about to begin, trouble arose on the left. Colonel Prescott had sent a detachment of provincials down into Charlestown, where they were now occupying empty buildings and firing on Pigot’s regulars.

  As it so happened, Admiral Graves had just arrived at Morton’s Point. Ever since the night of April 19, he’d been eager to burn this troublesome town, and he now saw his chance. He asked if Howe wanted Charlestown destroyed. The general gave his consent.

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  Two types of projectiles were used to fire on and burn a town from without: superheated cannonballs known as hotshot and circular metal baskets full of gunpowder, saltpeter, and tallow that looked so much like the ribcages of the dead that they were called carcasses. The first carcass fell short near the ferry dock, but the second fell in the street and was soon spewing molten fire among the surrounding houses. Just to make sure, Graves dispatched a group of sailors from the Somerset to help “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.

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  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 Ya
nkees will fight.”

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  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 transfixed the eye, particularly the church steeples, which had become, Burgoyne wrote, “great pyramids of fire” as entire blocks of houses collapsed in crashes of flame and smoke.

  The provincials were equally impressed, especially those stationed in the redoubt, who had, one officer wrote, “the conflagration [of Charlestown] blazing in their faces.” Few of them had ever confronted such a daunting display of military power and resolve. Joseph Warren had always insisted that there were limits to how far Britain was willing to go when it came to opposing her colonies, claiming “that they never would send large armies” into battle against the Americans. Now, with Charlestown burning and an army of more than two thousand soldiers marching in his direction, he must have realized that he’d been wrong. He also must have begun to wonder whether all the destruction and death that lay ahead would be justified by the ultimate result.

  Prescott, however, had more immediate concerns. He must convince his exhausted, awe-struck soldiers that they had a fighting chance. He told them that “the redcoats would never reach the redoubt if they would observe his directions: withhold their fire until he gave the order, take good aim, and be particularly careful not to shoot over their heads; aim at their hips.” Ebenezer Bancroft remembered that Prescott also told them to “take particular notice of the fine coats,” meaning that they should do their best to shoot at the scarlet, as opposed to red, coats of the British officers.

  To the east, at the rail fence, Colonel Stark told his men to hold their fire until they “could see the enemy’s half-gaiters,” the heavy linen splash guards that were secured to a regular’s foot by a strap below the instep and reached halfway up the calf. At the beach Stark provided the men clustered behind the stone wall with a visual aid, positioning either a rock or a piece of wood about fifty yards away to indicate the place that the enemy must cross before they could open fire. In every instance, the message was the same: to maximize the effectiveness of their very limited supplies of gunpowder, they must wait till the last possible moment before they unleashed a volley. Perhaps one provincial officer even used an expression that had been in common usage for decades and told his men to hold their fire until they could see the whites of the enemy’s eyes.

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  Howe marched bravely at the head of his line of grenadiers toward the rail fence, his staff, including a servant clutching a bottle of wine, clustered about him. As they approached the rebel line, the cannonading of the enemy suddenly ceased so as to prevent any injury to the British forces during the attack. In the unnatural, smoke-filled quiet, the regulars prepared for the assault.

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  Over on the right, on the beach between the bluff and the river, in their own narrow corridor of sand, the light infantry of the Welch Fusiliers approached the provincial stone wall, “as if,” a provincial wrote, “not apprised of what awaited them.” The soldiers’ uniforms were faced in royal blue. At the Battle of Minden in northern Germany in 1759, the Fusiliers had been part of an army that had proven its valor against a French force that was estimated to be 54,000 strong. Up ahead, there could not have been many more than one hundred provincials behind that stone wall. They would punch through with their bayonets fixed. It seemed strange that the enemy had not yet begun to fire; perhaps they had already turned and run.

  Suddenly the provincial muskets erupted in flame and smoke. Packed in three deep behind the wall, the New Englanders took turns firing. As one man reloaded his musket, which took a little less than thirty seconds, another was blasting away at the British. As long as their powder held out, the provincials could sustain what was described as “a continued sheet of fire.” Unfortunately, the Welch Fusiliers, with a steep nine-foot bank to their left and the river to their right, had nowhere to hide. Musket balls slammed into their torsos and legs with a sickening slap, cutting bloody gouges into their flesh and splintering bones. (A British surgeon later wondered whether the Yankees purposely aimed low so as to add to the regulars’ sufferings, since leg wounds almost always required amputation.) Every man in the front group dropped to the ground, either dead or wounded; others came up from behind and were also cut down. Over and over again, the scenario was repeated. According to Stark, “The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.” Finally, with close to a hundred bodies lying lifeless on the beach, the remnants of Howe’s light infantry turned and fled. A minister watching from the opposite shore of the Mystic River reported that they “retreated in disorder and with great precipitation to the place of landing, and some of them sought refuge even within their boats. Here the officers were observed . . . to run down to them, using the most passionate gestures and pushing men forward with their swords.”

  It was almost as bad on the high ground to the west when the provincials opened up on the line of grenadiers. Already frustrated by the fences and the terrain, many of the grenadiers disobeyed orders and paused to fire at the entrenched enemy instead of charging ahead. Not only did this stop the advance in its tracks, Howe’s picture-perfect formation was ruined as the second line found itself stumbling into the grenadiers ahead of them. “They began firing,” Howe wrote, “and by crowding fell into disorder and in this state the second line mixed with them.” This confused jumble of soldiers provided the enemy with an excellent target. “There was no need of waiting for a chance to fire,” one provincial soldier wrote, “for as soon as you had loaded, there was always a mark at hand, and as near as you pleased.”

  But if all seemed confusion, there was, among the provincials at least, a definite agenda. “Our men were intent on cutting down every officer . . . ,” Henry Dearborn wrote, “[shouting,] ‘there,’ ‘see that officer,’ ‘let us have a shot at him.’ When two or three would fire at the same moment . . . , [resting] their muskets over the fence, they were sure of their object.” The grenadiers, on the other hand, who were without the benefit of a barricade and were firing desperately from a standing position, were less effective with their muskets and inevitably shot too high. After the fighting, Dearborn noticed that an apple tree behind the rail fence “had scarcely a ball in it from the ground as high as a man’s head while the trunk and branches above were literally cut to pieces.”

  According to Marine Lieutenant John Clarke, one provincial soldier did particular damage to the ranks of the British officers. Sta
nding on a platform that put him close to three feet higher than those around him, the rebel sharpshooter would see a British officer, fire, hand over his spent musket, get handed a loaded weapon, and fire again. Over the course of ten to twelve minutes, the sharpshooter killed or wounded, Clarke estimated, “no less than 20 officers” until a grenadier from the Welch Fusiliers finally shot him down.

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  About this time Captain John Chester and his company, their blue uniforms hidden beneath their shabbiest of clothes, had made it across the Neck to Bunker Hill. Chester was horrified by what he found. All around them, provincial soldiers were doing their best to avoid the fighting, “some behind rocks and haycocks and 30 men perhaps behind an apple tree and frequently 20 men round a wounded man, retreating, when not more than three or four could touch him to advantage. Others were retreating, seemingly without any excuse.” Putnam was providing anything but inspirational leadership. “The plea was,” Chester wrote, “the artillery was gone, and they stood no chance for their lives in such circumstances, declaring ‘they had no officers to lead them.’ ”

  Chester and his company pushed on toward Breed’s Hill, “the small as well as cannon shot . . . incessantly whistling by us.” Samuel Webb was marching beside Chester. “Descending into the valley from off Bunker Hill . . . ,” Webb wrote, “I had no more thought of ever rising the hill again than I had of ascending to heaven as Elijah did, soul and body together. But after we got engaged, to see the dead and wounded around us, I had no feelings but that of revenge; four men were shot dead within five feet of me.”

  After the first disastrous attack on the rail fence, Howe reformed his ranks and tried once again. With reinforcements, however slight, from Bunker Hill, the provincial line once again held firm, making Howe’s hoped-for bayonet charge impossible. According to a British officer, “an incessant stream of fire poured from the rebel lines . . . for near 30 minutes. Our light infantry were served up in companies against the grass fence, without being able to penetrate—indeed how could we penetrate? Most of our grenadier and light infantry, the moment of presenting themselves lost three-quarter and many nine-tenths of their men. Some had only eight and nine men a company left; some only three, four, and five.” One provincial soldier claimed that the regulars were reduced to piling the bodies of their dead compatriots “into a horrid breastwork to fire from.” A British officer ruefully wrote, “We may say with Falstaff . . . that ‘They make us here but food for gunpowder.’ ”