Battles of Lexington and Concord
On the night of 18 April 1775, British Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith led 700 regulars from Boston toward Concord, Massachusetts, where colonial militiamen had stored a cache of weapons. Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott rode ahead to warn the countryside. At dawn on 19 April, the column encountered 77 Lexington militiamen drawn up on the village green under Captain John Parker. A shot was fired — by whom remains disputed — and in the brief exchange eight militiamen were killed and ten wounded; the British suffered one wounded. The 'shot heard round the world,' as Emerson later called it, opened the war. At Concord's North Bridge, a larger force of perhaps 400 militiamen confronted the British rearguard and drove them back after a brief firefight in which three regulars and two militiamen were killed. As the British column withdrew toward Boston over the next six hours, it was subjected to continuous harassment along a sixteen-mile route flanked by stone walls, farmhouses, and wood lines. Militia from towns as far as twenty miles away had mobilised at the alarm and attacked the column from cover. By the time a relief column under Lord Percy rescued the retreating troops at Lexington, the British had suffered 273 casualties — killed, wounded, and missing — against 95 American casualties. Within days, 15,000–20,000 militia from across New England had converged on Boston, beginning the siege that would force the British evacuation in March 1776.
- Year: 1775 CE
- Category: Military
