General Gage,
the British Commander, had the sea open to him and a finely
tempered army upon which he could rely. The opposite was true of
his opponents. They were a motley host rather than an army. They
had few guns and almost no powder. Idle waiting since the fight
at Lexington made untrained troops restless and anxious to go
home. Nothing holds an army together like real war, and shrewd
officers knew that they must give the men some hard task to keep
up their fighting spirit. It was rumored that Gage was preparing
an aggressive movement from Boston, which might mean pillage and
massacre in the surrounding country, and it was decided to draw
in closer to Boston to give Gage a diversion and prove the mettle
of the patriot army. So, on the evening of June 16, 1775, there
was a stir of preparation in the American camp at Cambridge, and
late at night the men fell in near Harvard College.
Across the Charles River north from Boston, on a peninsula, lay
the village of Charlestown, and rising behind it was Breed's
Hill, about seventy-four feet high, extending northeastward to
the higher elevation of Bunker Hill. The peninsula could be
reached from Cambridge only by a narrow neck of land easily swept
by British floating batteries lying off the shore.
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