Battles of Lexington and Concord
British troops marched out of Boston on the night of 18 April 1775 to seize a colonial arms store and started a war. General Gage had orders to disarm the militia and arrest the leaders, and sent some 700 men to Concord, twenty-nine kilometres away, expecting to be back by evening. The colonists had been watching the garrison for months, and the warning went out ahead of the column — Revere and Dawes riding by different routes, church bells, gunshots, and messengers spreading in a radius that reached towns forty kilometres away before dawn. At Lexington about seventy militia stood on the common at first light in front of the road. Their commander told them not to fire unless fired upon, and then to disperse; somebody fired, nobody knows who, and eight of them were killed. The regulars went on to Concord, found little, and were engaged at the North Bridge, where the militia fired on regulars in formation for the first time. The march back was the disaster. Militia from every surrounding town closed on the road, firing from behind walls and trees along twenty-nine kilometres of it, and the column was saved from destruction only by a relief brigade with two guns. The British lost some 273 men and the colonists 95. By nightfall some 15,000 militia were around Boston, and the siege began. Emerson's shot heard round the world was written for a monument sixty-two years later. Gage had also been ordered to arrest Hancock and Adams and did not find them, and the war began over a store of powder and cannon that had largely been moved a week earlier. Almost nothing about the day went as either side intended.
- Year: 1775 CE
- Category: Military
