Lexington and Concord, 19 April 1775

The battle, stage by stage

1. 18–19 April 1775, 10 PM to 2 AM

   The alarm

   General Thomas Gage sends Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith with the grenadier and light infantry companies of the Boston garrison — about 700 men, with Major John Pitcairn of the Marines — to seize and destroy the province's military stores at Concord, about 18 miles away. From about 10:30 PM Navy boats ferry them across the Back Bay to Lechmere Point in East Cambridge; they wade ashore through a marsh, 'wet up to the knees' by Lieutenant John Barker's diary, and wait on a muddy road until about 2 AM for provisions. The plan is no secret. Paul Revere is rowed past HMS Somerset to Charlestown and rides by way of Medford; William Dawes goes out over Boston Neck. Both reach the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, where John Hancock and Samuel Adams are staying, and ride on with Dr. Samuel Prescott. A British mounted patrol takes Revere on the road in Lincoln; Dawes turns back; Prescott jumps a wall and carries the warning to Concord. Lexington's company musters on the Green around 1 AM. (The riders are shown for context only.)

2. 19 April, about 5 AM

   Lexington Green

   Captain John Parker's Lexington company — 77 men by the usual count, though estimates run from about 60 to British guesses of 200 or 300 — stands in two ranks on the north part of the Green, near the road to Bedford and away from the road to Concord, more a show of resolve than a barrier. Pitcairn's six light infantry companies come up the Cambridge road; the leading companies pass north of the meetinghouse and form a line, while Pitcairn rides around the south side, ordering the militia to lay down their arms. Parker, by his own deposition, orders his men to disperse and not to fire. Then a shot rings out. Who fired first is disputed and probably can never be known: nearly all the American depositions say the regulars did; Pitcairn reported shots from behind a wall, Barker that the militia fired first, and Lieutenant Edward Gould that he could not say. The regulars fire volleys and charge without orders. Eight Lexington men are killed and ten wounded; one regular is wounded and Pitcairn's horse is hit. Smith comes up with the grenadiers, restores order, and marches on to Concord.

3. About 7 to 9 AM

   The search at Concord

   The regulars enter Concord about 7 AM, light infantry on the ridge, grenadiers on the road; the militia fall back across the North Bridge to Punkatasset Hill. Smith and Pitcairn use the Wright Tavern as headquarters while the grenadiers search the town. Captain Mundy Pole guards the South Bridge; Captain Walter Laurie holds the North Bridge with three light companies, about 96 men, while Captain Lawrence Parsons takes four companies, about 120 men, two miles on to Colonel James Barrett's farm. Warned in time, the Barretts have moved or hidden the stores, and the province's cannon are already gone; the soldiers find nothing. In town the regulars dump flour and shot into the millpond and burn gun carriages and entrenching tools. Meanwhile companies from Acton, Bedford, Lincoln and other towns join Concord's men on the Muster Field above the bridge, nearly 400 in all, minute companies on the right and militia on the left, and Laurie's companies fall back toward the bridge.

4. About 9:30 AM

   The North Bridge

   Smoke rises from the town center, where the fire from the burning gun carriages has spread to the town house. 'Will you let them burn the town down?' Lieutenant Joseph Hosmer reportedly asks. Colonel Barrett orders an advance, not to fire unless fired upon, and the column marches two abreast down to the bridge with Captain Isaac Davis's Acton minute company at its head and Major John Buttrick in command. Laurie's companies pull back across and crowd into a column on the east bank. A few British shots splash into the river, then a ragged volley, apparently without orders, kills Davis and Abner Hosmer. Buttrick shouts 'Fire, fellow soldiers, for God's sake, fire!' The exchange lasts only minutes: the regulars lose three killed or mortally wounded and nine wounded, and break back toward the town, meeting Smith's slow-moving grenadiers. The militia do not pursue. Parsons's companies return from the Barrett farm over the bridge unmolested. The Rev. William Emerson watches from the Old Manse.

5. About 12:30 to 2:15 PM

   The Battle Road

   About noon Smith starts back for Boston, with flankers out along the ridge north of the road. At Meriam's Corner, where the ridge ends and the column must close up to cross a small bridge, the Reading, Billerica and Chelmsford companies open fire, up to 1,100 militia by one count; from here on the Americans attack. Sudbury and Framingham men join near Brooks Hill. At Elm Brook Hill, the 'Bloody Angle', Major Loammi Baldwin's Woburn men fire from the high ground east of the brook and others from the west, catching the regulars 'between two fires'; at least eight are killed there by one militiaman's count. Bedford's Captain Jonathan Wilson is killed near the Hartwell farms. At the Lincoln line Parker's Lexington company, in a wooded, boulder-strewn position that recent battlefield archaeology places just north of the traditional outcrop, fires into the column from close range: 'Parker's Revenge'. On Fiske Hill Smith is wounded in the leg, an officer is thrown from his horse, and the column, nearly out of ammunition, begins to break.

6. About 2:30 to 3:30 PM

   Percy's relief

   Brigadier General Hugh, Earl Percy, has marched from Boston at about 9 AM by Boston Neck, Roxbury and Cambridge with the 1st Brigade — the 4th, 23rd and 47th Regiments and the 1st Battalion of Marines, about 1,000 men — and two 6-pounders. He forms his brigade on the high ground about half a mile east of Lexington Green and opens his ranks for Smith's exhausted men, who fall down 'with their tongues hanging out of their mouths', as one British account later put it.Percy reported meeting them 'about 2 o'clock'; most modern timelines say nearer 3. His guns scatter the militia for a while, one ball passing through the meetinghouse, and his men burn houses near the village. The Munroe Tavern becomes his headquarters and hospital. Earlier, the 'old men of Menotomy' had captured one of his supply wagons. The positions of the four regiments within Percy's line are schematic.

7. About 4:30 to 5:30 PM

   Menotomy

   Percy resumes the march about 3:30 PM with Smith's men at the head of the column, the 23rd as rear guard and flankers out on both sides. Brigadier General William Heath and Dr. Joseph Warren join the militia, whose numbers keep growing as companies arrive from farther towns. At the Foot of the Rocks and through the village of Menotomy (now Arlington) the fighting is the heaviest of the day: militia fire from walls, orchards and houses, and the flankers break into houses and kill those they find inside. Jason Russell and about eleven others, many of them Danvers men, are killed in and around his house, the most killed in any one place that day; Jabez Wyman and Jason Winship are killed in Cooper's Tavern. Samuel Whittemore, 80, is shot, bayoneted and left for dead, and lives. By the Arlington Historical Society's count about 40 regulars are killed and 80 wounded in Menotomy, and 25 Americans killed and 9 wounded.

8. About 6 to 7:30 PM

   Charlestown Neck

   At Watson's Corner in Cambridge the flankers trap a party of militia, killing several. Rather than take the right-hand road through Cambridge toward a bridge where militia are waiting,Percy takes the road to Charlestown over Prospect Hill, his guns firing again. As dusk falls the column crosses Charlestown Neck and forms on Bunker Hill under the guns of HMS Somerset; Colonel Timothy Pickering's Essex militia reach Winter Hill too late to block the way, and Heath halts the pursuit. The fighting has covered some 16 to 18 miles of road. Gage's return gives British losses as 73 killed, 174 wounded and 26 missing; the Americans lost 49 killed, 39 wounded (41 in some counts) and 5 missing. By morning thousands of militia ring Boston, and the siege of Boston has begun.