sants they despised were not idle
and would not allow them to be idle. The English general woke up one
morning to find that under cover of night an important point of vantage
overlooking the town of Boston had been occupied and roughly fortified
by the rebels. The citizen soldiers who had gathered together to
defend their liberties had stolen a march upon the English general.
They had occupied the rising ground of Breed Hill, below Bunker's Hill,
on the Charlestown side of the Charles River, and had hurriedly
intrenched themselves there behind rude but efficient earthworks. Gage
was resolved that the rebels should not remain long in their new
position. Chance might have allotted them a scratch victory over a
small body of men taken unawares in unfamiliar country {176} and by
unfamiliar methods of fighting. But here was a business familiar to
the British soldier; here was work that he did well and that he loved
to do. If the colonists really believed that they could hold Breed
Hill against troops with whom the taking by storm of strong positions
was a tradition, so much the worse for them. The order was given that
the rebels must be cleared away from Breed Hill at once, and the
welcome task was given to Lord Howe, in command of the flower of the
forces in Boston. It is probable that Howe felt some pity for the rash
and foolhardy men whose hopes it was his duty and his determination to
destroy. Confident that the enterprise would be as brief as it must be
decisive, Howe prepared to assault, and the battle of Breed Hill began.

[Sidenote: 1775--The Battle of Breed Hill]

The Breed Hill battle is one of the strangest and one of the bravest
fights ever fought by men. On the one side were some hundreds of
simple citizens, civilians, skilled as individuals in the use of the
gun, and accustomed as volunteers, militia, and minute-men to something
that might pass for drill and manoeuvre, officered and generalled by
men who, like Warren and Greene, knew warfare only by the bookish
theoric, or by men who, like Putnam and Pomeroy, had taken their
baptism of fire and blood in frontier struggles with wild beast and
wilder Indian. On the other side were some thousands of the finest
troops in the world, in whose ranks victory was a custom, on whose
banners the names of famous battles blazed. They were well trained,
well armed, well equipped. They moved at the word of command with the
monotonous precision and perfection of