From this vantage point, the general could also look past the rebel redoubt on Breed’s Hill to higher Bunker Hill and see quite a conglomeration of men. Howe had no way of knowing that Prescott and Putnam had not come up with much of a battle plan and that command and control was lacking. But what he saw was enough to give him pause. Colonel John Stark’s First New Hampshire Regiment—likely about four hundred men—was moving through the confusion and making its way down the slopes toward what Howe thought was an “earthwork” above the Mystic River. In truth, it was only a reinforced rail fence covered with newly mown hay to give it an earthy tone.
Stark’s regiment had been quartered in Medford, about four miles away, and had received its orders to march about ten o’clock that morning. Being as short of ammunition and powder as most units were, Stark formed his men in front of a temporary arsenal “where each man received a gill cup full of powder, fifteen balls and one flint.” Given the hodgepodge of firearms, “there were scarcely two muskets in a company of equal caliber,” and “it was necessary to reduce the size of the balls for many of them.”26
By the time Stark led his companies to the Cambridge side of Charlestown Neck, he found two regiments halted and blocking the way because of the fire being poured on the neck by the Symmetry from across the millpond. Stark’s adjutant went forward and said to their commanders that “if they did not intend to move on, he [Colonel Stark] wished them to open and let our regiment pass.” This they gladly did.
Henry Dearborn, who would go on to less-than-glorious service throughout the Revolution and during the War of 1812, was then a captain commanding the advance company of Stark’s regiment as it started across the neck. Stark led the way at “a very deliberate pace,” despite the British cannon fire. Should they not quicken the march, Dearborn asked, in order that they might sooner get across the exposed ground? Stark, the French and Indian War veteran, looked over at Dearborn with steadied New Hampshire calm and replied, “ ‘Dearborn, one fresh man in action is worth ten fatigued ones’ and continued to advance in the same cool and collected manner.”27
Stark found Putnam atop Bunker Hill, but as he looked down the slope toward Moulton’s Point, it was obvious what needed to be done. After “a short but animated address,” to which his men gave three cheers, Stark led his regiment into the gap between Captain Thomas Knowlton’s men at the rail fence and the Mystic River. A smaller New Hampshire regiment, commanded by Colonel James Reed, arrived at about the same time and joined the line. In this way, the vulnerable left side of the rebel line came to be reinforced with men as hard as New Hampshire granite.
But as Howe’s troops prepared to move forward, Stark saw one other weakness from his position at the fence. The rail fence ran down the slope toward a small bluff but then stopped where the slope dropped the last dozen feet to the beach. Even at high tide, there was ample passage at the base of the bluff for troops to flank the fence. Stark immediately directed several of his companies to pile stones between the base of the bluff and out into the water and to take up positions behind what became essentially a continuation of the rail fence.28
Seeing this increasing array of firepower forming on the left of the rebel line, Howe may have wished that he had worked with Admiral Graves to deploy the navy differently and/or that he had heeded Clinton’s advice about a landing to the rear of the rebel line. He could see that a pounding from a ship or two in the Mystic, as the Symmetry was delivering off the millpond and as the Lively, Glasgow, and Falcon were engaged in on the Charles, might discourage Knowlton’s, Reed’s, and Stark’s men at the rail fence and the hastily erected stone wall. Howe ordered two floating batteries that were firing off the millpond to move around to the Mystic side, but time and tide were against them, and they never got into position.29
Meanwhile, the left side of the British line, where Brigadier General Pigot was stationed as second in command, was coming under attack from rebel skirmishers firing from buildings in Charlestown. Pigot faced one of his regiments in that direction and returned ineffective volleys. Watching this harassment, Admiral Graves, who to his great credit “went ashore in person to be near General Howe,” now made the same suggestion to Howe that he had made to General Gage on the evening of April 19: burn Charlestown. Howe readily agreed, and the admiral signaled his ships as well as the Copp’s Hill battery to fire incendiary carcasses into the town. According to Graves, the town “was instantly set on fire in many places, and the Enemy quickly forced from that station.” It didn’t happen all that quickly, of course, and it is likely that some of Pigot’s men on the shore finished the task with torches. In any event, the result was that most of the rebel skirmishers withdrew from the burning buildings, and Pigot secured his left flank for the coming assault up the hill.30
But Howe was clearly worried by the many signs of rebel activity. “From this appearance,” the general recalled, “as well as our observation that they were assembling with all the force they could collect, I applied to General Gage for a reinforcement of troops.”31 These were the remaining troops assembled at the North Battery—the companies of light infantry and grenadiers remaining in Boston, along with the Forty-Seventh Regiment and Pitcairn’s First Battalion of Marines.
By the time these reinforcements of the Forty-Seventh Regiment and the First Marines joined with those of the first and second waves, Howe had about 2,200 men in the field, divided between the right division, under his personal command, which would attempt to flank Breed’s Hill by going through Stark’s line at the rail fence, and Pigot’s left division, which would march straight up the hill against Prescott’s redoubt and principal earthworks.
Upon receiving these additional troops, Howe rearranged his command into two lines instead of the original three at Moulton’s Point and “began the attack by a sharp cannonade from our field pieces and two Howitzers.” In between the cannon blasts, Howe’s entire formation—the right side of which was spread out some five hundred yards in front of the rebel left at the rail fence—began a slow but steady advance, “frequently halting to give time for the artillery to fire.”32
But the field artillery action that day proved a comedy of errors on both sides. Rather than cannonading the rebel positions from his initial deployment on Moulton’s Hill—which might well have proven that the rail fence was far from “cannon proof”—Howe ordered his meager artillery forward with his battle line. All that did was to stutter-step his advance and give the rebels more time to get into position to counter his thrust. Even then, the cannons bogged down in marshy ground on the rebel side of Moulton’s Hill. To add insult to injury, a snafu in the supply department resulted in twelve-pound balls being delivered to the six-pound fieldpieces, forcing them to fire grapeshot, which had to cease once the troop lines moved forward of their mired positions.
Rebel artillery didn’t fare much better. Four artillery pieces made their way to the crest of Breed’s Hill early that morning, but according to Peter Brown of Prescott’s regiment, “the Captn of which fir’d a few times [at Boston] then swung his Hat three times round to the enemy and ceas’d to fire.” By the time Howe’s troops started to land, these pieces were ordered to repulse the landing, but their commander, Captain John Callender, chose to withdraw to the safer heights of Bunker Hill instead.33
There Callender encountered an enraged Colonel Putnam on horseback. What did Callender think he was doing? Old Put sputtered. Callender claimed he was out of powder cartridges, but Putnam quickly dismounted and examined the ammunition boxes to find that was a lie. Putnam ordered Callender to return with his guns to support Stark’s left flank. Callender himself quickly disappeared, but Putnam personally directed the redeployment of his cannons.34
So onward Howe’s lines came. It was a pretty sight, but Howe, who had once led the way for General Wolfe’s troops onto the Plains of Abraham, should have remembered his mentor’s tactics: speed and by column were the operative words. There certainly was no speed to this advance, and rather than arrowlike c
olumns, Howe had deployed most of his troops in long lines across the open ground. “If an intrenchment is to be attacked,” Wolfe had written in 1755, in a set of instructions to young officers, “the troops should move as quick as possible towards the place, not in a line, but in small firing columns of three or four platoons in depth.”35
The only column in the attack was formed by Howe’s companies of light infantry that were sent along the beach against Stark’s men at the stone barricade. These nimble troops were to turn the end of the rebel line and press it with a pincerlike movement against the grenadier companies and the Fifth and Fifty-Second Regiments advancing up the open slope. Incredibly, the British had not loaded their muskets. This was to be a bayonet charge.
But except for the light infantry along the beach, there was no dash to the maneuver. “The intermediate space between the two armies,” Howe complained, “was cut by fences, formed of strong posts and close railing, very high, and which could not be broken readily.”36
On the British left, Pigot was planning a similar encirclement. He had three companies of light infantry and three of grenadiers, along with the Thirty-Eighth, Forty-Third, and Forty-Seventh Regiments and the marine battalion led by Major Pitcairn. With his left flank skirting the burning buildings of Charlestown, Pigot intended to sweep up the hill and encircle the redoubt on the left while his center and right attacked it head-on.37
By now it was well after three in the afternoon. An after-action report by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress termed the British advance “a very slow march towards our lines.”38 General Clinton, still watching from Copp’s Hill, termed it “exceedingly soldierlike” and, whatever misgivings he may have had, nonetheless called Howe’s disposition “perfect.”39
For one last fleeting moment, the difference between Lexington and Concord and what was about to occur below Bunker Hill stood in stark relief. This could not be called an accident or the result of a lack of intelligence by either side. As General Howe’s troops advanced toward Prescott’s and Stark’s positions late on the afternoon of June 17, 1775, it was very clear to any observer from Copp’s Hill to Cambridge that the outcome would be a pitched battle.
All afternoon, as Howe finessed his formations and moved his troops forward with all the speed of tentative pawns in a casual chess match, the bulk of the American line had remained silent. Rebel commanders, fully aware of their limited quantity of gunpowder, continually admonished their men to hold their fire and reminded them that when the order finally came, they were to aim low, a lesson learned from the errant volleys of the British regulars along the Concord road.
The famous line most associated with the Battle of Bunker Hill is, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Who uttered it, if anyone did, is uncertain. The likely candidates are Israel Putnam, as he hurried Callender’s cannons into place, William Prescott, as he peered out from the redoubt into Pigot’s advancing lines, or John Stark, as he steadied his men along the rail fence. Given that the line was already somewhat of a military staple that originated in earlier European wars, all three men may have shouted some version of it.
According to James Wilkinson, who visited the battlefield as a young man a year later and who later still would become a scoundrel in the Burr conspiracy, Colonel Stark directed his men along the rail fence and behind the stone wall not to fire until they could see the enemy’s white-colored half gaiters. Given the terrain, this would have been at a distance of about fifty yards. “From this it would seem,” Wilkinson claimed, “that the often quoted order, ‘Don’t fire until you see the white of their eyes,’ was more nearly, ‘Don’t fire until you see the white of their gaiters.’ ”40
As the rebels held their fire, onward the front line of Howe’s regulars came, resplendent in their red uniforms. Then, at perhaps fifty yards, the command to fire came, and the entire rebel line exploded with a roar of thunder and a profusion of smoke.
Chapter 24
“A Dear Bought Victory”
And now,” wrote Major General John Burgoyne with his usual dramatic flair, “ensued one of the greatest scenes of war that can be conceived: if we look to the height, Howe’s corps ascending the hill in the face of intrenchments, and in a very disadvantageous ground, was much engaged; to the left the enemy pouring in fresh troops by thousands, over the land; and in the arm of the sea our ships and floating batteries cannonading them; straight before us a large and noble Town [Charlestown] in one great blaze—the church-steeples being timber, were great pyramids of fire above the rest; behind us, the church-steeples and heights of our own camp [Boston] covered with spectators of the rest of our Army which was engaged; the hills round the country covered with spectators; the enemy all in anxious suspense; the roar of cannon, mortars, and musketry.” Perhaps the worst part, Burgoyne concluded, was the reflection that a defeat here would be “a final loss to the British Empire in America.”1
GENERATIONS OF ARMCHAIR STRATEGISTS WOULD later fault General Howe for sending his troops to slaughter by marching them in two long lines up Breed’s Hill. It wasn’t quite that simple, and that frontal maneuver in and of itself was certainly not Howe’s initial intent. To be sure, his advance was slow and not in column, save for the light infantry companies on the beach, but by all accounts Howe placed great faith in his light infantry’s ability to turn the end of the rebel line and create havoc along it. After that, the grenadier companies, supported by the Fifth and Fifty-Second Regiments, would bulldoze through the rebel left with bayonets fixed and trap Prescott’s men in the redoubt.2
On the rebel right, Brigadier General Pigot was trying somewhat the same maneuver on a more limited scale—given the narrow confines between the redoubt and Charlestown as opposed to the wide ground in front of Howe. Thus this was not an overconfident frontal assault—even if it turned out that way—but a calculated thrust designed to turn the rebel flanks and roll up the entire lot of them behind Prescott’s redoubt. If that had indeed happened, it is interesting to speculate what action, if any, Colonel Putnam might have taken from atop Bunker Hill. Instead, the result was that Colonel John Stark and his New Hampshire men stood firm on the beach and at the rail fence and thwarted Howe’s flanking attempt.
Eleven companies of light infantry, comprising about 350 men and led by the company from the Twenty-Third Regiment—the Royal Welch Fusiliers—rushed headlong in a column of fours against Stark’s hastily erected rock piles on the Mystic beach. The first volley from the rebel line decimated this advance company. The second company in the column, that of the Fourth “King’s Own,” confidently moved forward to take its place, expecting to reach the defenders and rout them with bayonets. Stark’s men, however, were positioned three deep, and before the attackers could gain more than a few yards, another ragged volley rent the air and ripped apart the men from the King’s Own. Onward the column of light infantry came, but the New Hampshire lads continued to put up a hail of fire, and “as the broken lines of each company gave way, the successor pressed forward, only in turn to be shattered.”3
The grenadier companies and regiments marching in two lines on the slope above the beach heard these musket volleys without being able to ascertain the results. They likely expected to hear a cheer as their light infantry comrades swept around the end of the rebel line and its defenders fled before them. But there was no cheer from the beach. Even more ominously, there was no movement from the rebel line behind the rail fence.
Howe had indeed intended that the grenadiers and men of the Fifth and Fifty-Second Regiments would sweep through the rebel line at the rail fence with bayonets alone—hard steel driven home. But as the coordinated light infantry attack collapsed on the beach, these advancing troops were thwarted in a bayonet charge both by the terrain—the difficulty in climbing over and through other fences en route—and by the heavy fire from the American line, which had in no way been abated by the light infantry attack.
“As fast as the front man was shot down,” one rebel report claimed,
“the next stepped forward into his place, but our men dropt them so fast, they were a long time coming up.” What was most surprising to this observer was how the British regulars “would step over their dead bodies, as though they had been logs of wood.”4
As Howe told the story, the grenadiers made the attack with “a laudable perseverance, but not the greatest share of discipline,” because rather than pushing the bayonet charge they took time to load and “began firing, and by crowding fell into disorder, and in this State the 2d Line mixt with them.” The only thing worse was what was happening on the beach to the companies of light infantry. “The Light Infantry at the same time being repulsed,” wrote Howe, “there was a Moment that I never felt before.”5
Pigot’s attack on the American right and the redoubt met with similar failure, but just how aggressive Pigot was in pushing this first wave on his side of the battlefield has always been a matter of debate. Howe and Pigot may well have agreed that Pigot would make a feint in strength on the American right to distract Prescott’s men while Howe swept around the left flank. Pigot would not charge the redoubt itself until Howe’s troops were circling behind it. It’s also quite possible that having encountered fences impeding their orderly advance, and still taking some fire from the outskirts of burning Charlestown, Pigot’s advance bogged down in the face of fire from Prescott’s lines in much the same manner as Howe’s did.
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