Free Fusiliers by Mark Urban

Major Pitcairn, the marine officer who had commanded the light companies at Lexington. The British had, by way of response, pulled back and got their warships to fire carcass (incendiary shells) into the town, and it was soon burning fiercely.
    On a hillside in Boston Major General John Burgoyne and numerous other sightseers were watching. The soldier-dramatist was alive to the awful grandeur of the unfolding scene, writing that the
     
    prospect of the neighbouring hills, the steeples of Boston, and the masts of the ships as were unemployed in the harbour, all crowded with spectators, friends and foes, alike in anxious suspense, made background to the piece; and the whole together composed a representation of war that I think the imagination of Le Brun never reached.
     
    Under the new orders Pigot was to skirt around the inferno of Charlestown and Howe would pull together the 5th and 52nd, extricating them from the confusion in front of the rail fence and attacking the hilltop from the right. Major General Henry Clinton, who had been watching events alongside Burgoyne, was so worried by what he could see that he made his way to the quayside and crossed by boat. There he put himself at the head of some further companies of men who had been sent across from Boston as reinforcements.
    As the British threw new forces into the bloody struggle for a little hill that hardly any of them would have previously noticed, the Americans too brought new companies to bear. Although the troops earmarked to defend the peninsula may have numbered as many as 3,000 early that morning, many had decided they would rather be elsewhere, particularly once the British cannon had begun bombarding in earnest from around 11 a.m.
    It was not simply a matter of desertion by startled individuals here and there. In some cases, the officers ordered entire companies to march off, across the neck towards the backcountry. Peter Brown, in the redoubt, watched in contempt as one artillery captain, possessingthe only American guns deployed on the hilltop, ‘took his pieces and returned home to Cambridge with much haste’. Brown wanted court martial and the death sentence for such a coward.
    Worried by the hundreds of men streaming off the peninsula, American commanders called forward additional men from the outlying villages. Captain John Chester led his company of militia from Wetherfield, Connecticut, and marched his men on to the peninsula at the height of the battle. He saw frightened groups running in the opposite direction ‘retreating, seemingly without any excuse, and some said they had left the fort with leave of the officers’.
    This produced fury in Chester, who prided himself on the steady discipline and smart appearance of his own volunteers wearing blue coats with red cuffs and lapels, unlike the great majority of Americans that day who simply came in working clothes. The captain was particularly angry when he saw groups of men marching away from battle under the leadership of their officers. Exasperated at trying to reason with one such hero, he wrote, ‘I halted my men and told him if he went on it should be at his peril. He still seemed regardless of me. I ordered my men to make ready. They immediately cocked, and declared that if I ordered they would fire.’ The threat of oblivion at last convinced the fleeing commander to do his duty.
    Chester’s men threw themselves into action at the rail fence, ‘every man loading and firing as fast as he could. As near as I could guess, we fought standing about six minutes.’ His militia had arrived near the end of the action in this sector.
    About one hour after Howe’s initial attack had begun, the second assault got under way, with redcoats attacking the Breed’s Hill redoubt from two sides. Pigot’s men had the smouldering houses of Charlestown close to their left. Howe directed the remnants of the grenadiers, 5th and 52nd, towards the place where the flèches met the breastwork on Breed’s