Battle of Bunker Hill
On 17 June 1775, British General William Howe led 2,200 regulars in three frontal assaults up Breed's Hill — misidentified in contemporary accounts as Bunker Hill — against fortifications that colonial militia had entrenched overnight on the Charlestown peninsula across the harbour from Boston. The colonials, under Colonel William Prescott and General Israel Putnam, held a redoubt and flanking breastwork with some 1,500 men. Howe's first two assaults, made in close-order formation across open ground, were repulsed with severe losses; on the third assault, after the defenders ran out of gunpowder and were reduced to fighting with musket butts and stones, the position was finally carried. The British took the hill but at catastrophic cost: 1,054 casualties, including 89 officers killed or wounded — among them Major Pitcairn, one of the officers from Lexington. The Americans lost approximately 450 men, including General Joseph Warren, the most prominent political figure to die in the early war. The battle's tactical lesson — that colonial militia in prepared positions could devastate professional infantry attacking in the open — shaped both sides' planning. Howe, who had led the assault, never again ordered a frontal attack of this kind. On the American side, the near-victory on minimal supplies established the myth of the capable citizen-soldier that sustained Continental Army recruitment through years of subsequent defeat.
- Year: 1775 CE
- Category: Military
