BBC_Rebels and Redcoats_1of4_The Shot Heard Around The World
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00:00The 19th of April, 1775, American militiamen raced through New England woods to intercept
00:09a column of British redcoats.
00:12This was to be the day when the yearnings of some Americans for independence would explode
00:17into outright war.
00:20These downtrodden Yankee farmers were doing no more than defending their homes and their
00:24freedom against the tyranny of King George and his ruthless redcoats, or so the myth
00:30goes.
00:36But this was no spontaneous uprising.
00:42It was a deliberate declaration of war against the mother country.
00:49In this series I'll be exploding some of the myths about the struggle that forged in
00:54the American nation.
00:56It was a war that trumpeted high ideals, and then saw them trampled underfoot.
01:02It promised liberty, but only for some.
01:06It was fought in the name of unity, but in reality it divided families, setting brother
01:12against brother.
01:14The American Revolution was, in fact, a bloody civil war.
01:44American militia and British redcoats had been brothers-in-arms, fighting the French,
01:56but the alliance quickly soured.
02:01The British barred American settlers from exploiting the wilderness to the west of the
02:05colonies, to avoid conflict with Native Americans.
02:10The colonists felt hemmed in behind what was called the Proclamation Line.
02:16By 1770, resentment was burning fiercely in the very heart of the colonies.
02:22Boston, capital of Massachusetts, is the crucible of the American Revolution.
02:28In 1770, Massachusetts was the most radical of the 13 British colonies in North America.
02:36But strangely, Boston was one of the richest cities in the land, heavily dependent on its
02:41trade with the mother country.
02:44The standard of living here was far higher than in Britain.
02:49The American colonies had never had it so good.
03:15Boston was booming, partly because the whole city was virtually one great tax-free haven.
03:22People living here paid about a fiftieth of the tax levied on their British fellows.
03:27The city was full of people on the make, craftsmen and traders hungry for fresh opportunities.
03:36But some of them felt that their freedom to make money and get rich was being restricted.
03:55The expanding British Empire demanded that the American colonies trade only with her,
04:01and not with foreign powers.
04:05This chokehold on trade didn't really hurt the established Tory elite, who'd already
04:10made their fortunes, but it frustrated the rising generation of entrepreneur, hungry
04:15for new business opportunities.
04:18To Boston's more radical citizens, Britain was no longer a benevolent mother country,
04:25guiding her children across the globe.
04:27She'd become an old tyrant.
04:32In the taverns of Boston's back streets, there were disgruntled citizens ready to turn
04:37that anger into action.
04:40Using agitation and propaganda, they hoped to provoke a heavy-handed reaction from the
04:45authorities.
04:46They were to revolution what yeast is to beer.
04:50And the most influential of them all, the man who has been described as the Marx, Lenin
04:55and Danton of the American Revolution rolled into one, was this man, Sam Adams, the brewer.
05:03Like many radicals, he was motivated partly by a sense of personal grievance.
05:08His father had lost a fortune in a banking collapse.
05:13Adams had a flair for plotting.
05:15Since his days as a student firebrand at Harvard, he'd been playing with the idea of a revolutionary
05:21break with Britain.
05:22The first citizens who came to the New World came as free men, and they had unlimited authority.
05:29They could have established an independent country if they wanted to.
05:33Working behind the scenes, Adams was the revolution's political and intellectual driving force.
05:39George III referred to him as the most dangerous man in America.
05:44At his side were John Hancock, merchant, smuggler, and the richest man in New England, and Paul
05:50Revere.
05:52By night, Revere was an arch-propagandist for the Boston revolutionaries.
05:58By day, he was a silversmith and engraver, and would use these skills with devastating
06:03effect.
06:06For all their plotting and agitation, these militants still had little real chance of
06:11mobilising popular support.
06:13Then one incident gave them the opportunity they needed, and provided Paul Revere with
06:20the ideal chance to show off his propagandist talents.
06:27In 1770, Adams began to exploit tensions between Boston citizens and the British troops
06:33billeted in the town.
06:36He called on Bostonians to demonstrate against the Redcoats, known dismissively as lobsters.
06:47On the 5th of March, 1770, a crowd, assembled here, outside the Boston State House, attacked
06:54a British sentry.
06:56An officer led up a relief party, which was immediately taunted by the angry mob.
07:03Someone shouted, fire.
07:07The hard-pressed soldiers did indeed fire.
07:10Three citizens were killed, and two more mortally wounded.
07:15This was certainly a tragedy, but it wasn't a deliberate massacre.
07:24Paul Revere saw an opportunity to rewrite history.
07:29A messy riot with a tragic end became a calculated massacre, which highlighted British tyranny.
07:38This is Revere's propaganda masterpiece, probably one of the most influential images in world
07:44history.
07:45It does take the occasional liberty with the truth.
07:49The Redcoats, like fierce barbarians grinning over their prey, approve the carnage and enjoy
07:55the day.
07:57Their firing squad looses off a devastating volley into the crowd, and a cowardly British
08:02assassin shoots from a window.
08:07But perhaps worse, it's whitened out one of the victims.
08:11Crispus Attucks was Native American and African American, but he's shown here as white so
08:17as to have more propaganda value.
08:19One of the most remarkable things about the print is the speed at which it was produced.
08:25It was being sold in three weeks of the event, before the news even reached London.
08:31The revolution had its first martyrs.
08:34What it now needed was a cause that would unite people behind it.
08:38Adams and his allies stepped up their agitation against the taxes levied by the British on
08:43various products.
08:45They even persuaded some Americans to boycott British tea.
08:51In November 1773, the ship Dartmouth slipped into Boston Harbour, carrying 114 cases of
08:59tea.
09:00Oddly enough, the tea in Dartmouth's hold must have been very appealing to many Bostonians,
09:06because even with the tax paid, it was actually cheaper than the smuggled tea that most of
09:10them were drinking.
09:13Bad news for smugglers, then, and bad news for radicals, too.
09:17If people bought the tea and paid the tax, their revolutionary cause would be under threat.
09:26This is the Old South Meeting House, home to freedom of speech in America.
09:31On the 16th of December, 1773, perhaps 5,000 people, a third of Boston's population, thronged
09:39here to listen to the arguments about what to do about the tea.
09:45And today, Bostonians are still re-enacting the event.
09:49Taxation without representation is tyranny.
09:52Yes.
09:53Men like Mr. Revere and Mr. Adams are out in the streets destroying men's businesses
09:57and men's families.
09:59That is shameful.
10:00Soldiers cannot be posted among us, and yet they are.
10:09On that day in 1773, Sam Adams gave one of the most important speeches of his life.
10:15If we are prevailed upon to implicitly acknowledge a right to tax us, we may be very sure that
10:22soon, very soon, every article being exported from Great Britain will be taxed as well.
10:32Adams was playing skillfully on fears of future taxation, even though the British weren't
10:37actually planning any.
10:39In any case, the whole taxation issue had never just been about making money for Britain.
10:45The colonies paid relatively little to the growing cost of their own defence.
10:50Now, brethren, we are reduced to this dilemma, to sit down quiet under this and any other
10:59burden that our enemies would impose upon us good-natured slaves, or rise and resist
11:10this tyranny.
11:11He'd fanned a storm in a teacup into a revolutionary hurricane.
11:21This was only the beginning of what was to become known as the Boston Tea Party.
11:2650 men dressed as Mohawk Indians, Paul Revere amongst them, went down to the wharf, boarded
11:33the Dartmouth, one of the tea ships, and threw the tea into the harbour.
11:39It was the most effective piece of non-violent protest in the whole of the 18th century.
11:44A brilliant two fingers, or, if you were a rebel, a single finger, to the crown.
11:51And it had precisely the desired effect.
11:55The British retaliated, with sanctions known as the Coercive Acts.
11:59They seized control of local government and closed the port of Boston.
12:06The man charged to manage this British crisis was General Thomas Gage.
12:11Already head of the British Army in America, he was now made Governor of Massachusetts.
12:16He was a political moderate, who believed the gathering crisis could be solved without
12:20bloody conflict.
12:23His American wife, Margaret, was beautiful, intelligent, and well-connected.
12:28But by 1774, her husband's love affair with the rest of America was waning.
12:34America is a mere bully, from one end to the other, and the Bostonians by far the greatest
12:40bullies.
12:41Boston!
12:42How I wish this cursed place was burned.
12:46Even his wife was now lecturing him about liberty and justice.
12:51For the powerful Thomas Gage, the coming conflict would come much closer to home than
12:57he could have imagined.
12:59And it was all going to happen much sooner than Gage had expected.
13:05Although perhaps a third of the population of the colonies as a whole was loyal to the
13:09crown, Massachusetts was much more militant.
13:13So much so, that as a reaction to the Coercive Acts, the radicals had actually taken control
13:19of local government from under the very noses of the British.
13:23This is a forgotten aspect of American history.
13:26There had been a bloodless revolution in the colony.
13:30Loyalists, Tories to their enemies, had been intimidated into resigning their posts, often
13:37by tarring and feathering, and many had sought refuge in Boston itself.
13:43As the citizen militias of Massachusetts trained to take on the British, Gage was forced
13:49to plan his counter-revolution.
13:52The time for conciliating, moderation and reason is now over.
13:58Nothing can be done but by forcible means.
14:01It was to be muscular policing.
14:03He still felt that bloodshed wasn't inevitable.
14:06I mean to avoid a bloody crisis at all costs, until forced into it by themselves, which
14:11may happen, the numerous slaves in the bowels of the country and the Indians at their backs
14:17will always keep them quiet.
14:26Gage had one last plan, to avoid the downward spiral into violence and anarchy.
14:33By taking away their gunpowder, he'd disarm the Massachusetts militias.
14:40His trump card was to be his intelligence network.
14:43He already had a spy inside the Boston Revolutionary's inner circle.
14:53And his spies in the countryside would help him find the main weapons dumps.
15:03He now planned a major raid on Concord, a large arms store 20 miles northwest of Boston,
15:09to disarm the militias.
15:12His troops would march there through the small town of Lexington.
15:17The rebels knew the British were about to act.
15:21If they found out precisely when and where, then armed militiamen could respond in overwhelming
15:26strength.
15:28Gage's plan depended on secrecy.
15:32But Thomas Lobster didn't easily go unnoticed.
15:35He marched in scarlet columns.
15:38And stealth was not his strong point.
15:42On the 18th of April, spymaster Paul Revere was warned that the Redcoats were about to
15:47march.
15:48The intelligence was confirmed by his own highly placed source within the British camp.
15:53It was time to call out the chain of up to 60 horse riders waiting to alert the militias.
16:01Paul Revere ordered that the prearranged signal would be made from this steeple.
16:06Two lanterns meant that the Redcoats were about to cross the Charles River.
16:11Revere was to be one of the riders that night, and he'd arranged to leave Boston by water.
16:19As the British columns set out, Thomas Gage discovered that his plan had been leaked.
16:25But he decided to carry on with the preemptive strike.
16:41By dawn, 900 British troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith were reaching
16:47the outskirts of Lexington.
16:57In the grey light, Lieutenant Sutherland of the advance guard could see a vast number
17:03of militia with their arms going over the hill towards Lexington.
17:09His comrade Jeremy Lister of the 10th Foot could see beacon fires burning brightly on
17:16the surrounding hills.
17:18Imagine the effect on the Redcoats of the sight of the warning beacons and the sound
17:24of the alarm church bells and musket shots.
17:28Although these men were tough regular soldiers, few of them were battle-hardened.
17:35Paul Revere had already been captured by an advance party of British officers and then
17:40released, but again, he'd done his work well.
17:45He'd told them what to expect, and rumour was passing back along the column.
17:51Paranoia was beginning to take hold.
18:05On this green, Captain John Parker, the elected commander of the Lexington militia, had mustered
18:13his men.
18:14Seeing the approaching superior numbers, Captain Parker ordered, let the troops pass by.
18:21Don't molest them without they being first.
18:25Stand your ground.
18:27Don't fire unless fired upon.
18:30But if they want a war, let it begin here.
18:44The lieutenant leading the British advance guard decided to march straight towards the
18:48militia rather than bypass them along the road.
18:52His commander, Major John Pitcairn, riding up from the rear, was dismayed by this confrontational
18:58tactic.
19:02He tried to stop the troops and warn off the rebels.
19:05Stand where you are!
19:07Rebels!
19:08Disperse, and throw down your arms!
19:11Halt the column.
19:13Halt!
19:23Captain Parker ordered his men to disperse and not to fire, and they began to retreat.
19:35No one knows who actually fired the first shot.
19:41That moment, when flint struck steel, and the spark flashed into the black powder, was
19:48decisive.
19:49Set your fire locks.
19:52There could be no going back.
19:57Fire!
20:07One kneeling militiaman, Jonas Parker, was bayoneted as he tried to reload.
20:13Jonathan Harrington was shot in the back and died just there.
20:18Jonas Parker was bayoneted as he tried to reload.
20:22Jonathan Harrington was shot in the back and died just there, on his doorstep, in front
20:27of his wife.
20:29Only the arrival of Colonel Smith and the rear guard put an end to the bloodletting.
20:34Eight militiamen were dead.
20:38BELL RINGS
20:44Sam Adams, with John Hancock, had only just left Lexington and was still in earshot.
20:52This bloodshed was exactly what he had been working for.
20:57Who actually fired this shot heard round the world?
21:01It's impossible to be sure.
21:03And in any case, it doesn't really matter, because by now, conflict was inevitable.
21:09This wasn't the first blow of the American Revolution.
21:13That had already been struck with the takeover of civil authorities across the whole of Massachusetts.
21:19This was the first shot of the Civil War.
21:23That bloodletting that Thomas Gage had feared had now begun.
21:28The British pressed on to Concord, still unaware of the size and determination
21:34of the irregular force assembled against them.
21:38From up to 50 miles around, Paul Revere and his chain of riders had mobilised thousands
21:44of militiamen, spoiling for exactly this sort of fight.
21:48When Colonel Smith arrived at Concord, he found that most of the arms had already been moved.
21:56A small detachment was sent over this, the town's north bridge,
22:00to secure the weapons from Barrett's farm.
22:03About 100 soldiers were left to guard the bridge itself.
22:06Although there were already hundreds of militia on the far side,
22:10they took no action until they saw smoke and flames coming from the town.
22:15The thought of their homes being torched by the Redcoats enraged the militiamen,
22:19and the cry went up, would you let them burn the town down?
22:24Then something remarkable happened.
22:27This supposed rebel formed into rough lines and opened a well-aimed fire,
22:32killing three soldiers.
22:34Many of these rebels had served with the British against the French in the Seven Years' War,
22:39just 12 years before.
22:42About 200 militia charged over the bridge and headed for the town,
22:46following the retreating Redcoats.
22:49Shortly afterwards, the British force reappeared that had been sent to Barrett's farm.
22:54As it crossed the bridge, it found a dying British soldier.
22:59According to Redcoat accounts, he'd been scalped and had his ears and brain removed.
23:05It was the first atrocity story of the war.
23:19This is a war between brothers, between cousins.
23:25That's what gives events in a place like this their strange and terrible edge.
23:30These are battles between people who could so easily have been friends and often were friends.
23:43It was still only midday,
23:45when the isolated British force began its withdrawal.
23:51But the swarm of 7,000 militia were in no mood to let it pass unmolested.
24:00The Redcoats would have to run the terrifying gauntlet all the way back to Boston.
24:06At this bend in the road, still called Bloody Curve,
24:10perhaps 30 Redcoats were killed by rebels waiting in ambush.
24:14The British, confined to the road, were sitting targets.
24:18The rebels, firing from the cover of trees and walls,
24:22picked off the faltering column.
24:24They adopted the simple tactic of gathering wherever there was cover.
24:28This was the only way to get to the Redcoats.
24:31They adopted the simple tactic of gathering wherever there was cover.
24:35They knew the British had to come back along this route.
25:02With Lexington in sight, and the column almost back to square one,
25:08British discipline crumbled at last.
25:11Some men sank to the ground exhausted.
25:14Others ran.
25:16And still others fought hand-to-hand with militia,
25:19in a desperate struggle for the Redcoats.
25:22The Redcoats were forced to retreat.
25:25The Redcoats were forced to retreat.
25:28And still others fought hand-to-hand with militia,
25:31in a desperate attempt to find water to drink.
25:34It seemed as if the end had come.
25:37But it had not.
25:39Thomas Gage, warned of the gathering militia storm,
25:43had sent out a relief column under his second-in-command, Lord Percy.
25:47It was already 3.15 in the afternoon.
25:50Fire!
25:52This was like the Hollywood cavalry arriving in the nick of time.
25:55With new heart, the column set off back for Boston,
25:59with better discipline, moving more slowly,
26:02and with more effective use of flankers to keep the rebels at arm's length.
26:07Flankers are coming!
26:12The flankers' job was to push the enemy away from the flanks of the main column.
26:17Here, they'd probably have held the edge of that wood.
26:20This was a dangerous and gruelling job.
26:26Fire!
26:28The rebels began to exploit a tactic of their own.
26:32This was a rolling burst of fire,
26:35constantly raking Percy's exposed column.
26:39Once they'd taken their potshots,
26:41they were able to ride or run to the next vantage point.
26:48Here at Arlington, some Redcoats began to take their revenge.
26:53Snipers were flushed from the houses,
26:56and the troops were in no mood to take prisoners.
26:59One old Yankee fought to the death,
27:02having refused to leave his house,
27:04declaring,
27:06an Englishman's home is his castle.
27:14Now the British had to get back to Boston.
27:17As the weary column reached this point on the Charles River,
27:21Percy had the choice of going straight on to Boston
27:24or swinging left to Charlestown.
27:27At the last moment, he chose the Charlestown Road,
27:30away from a considerable force of rebels on the bridge.
27:34With his last cannon shot, he scattered the rebels in front of him.
27:39They'd made it back.
27:42And they were just in time.
27:44It was 7 o'clock, almost nightfall.
27:47Hot on their heels, up to 30,000 rebels
27:50sealed Boston off from the rest of the American continent.
27:54The city was joined to the mainland by a narrow neck of land.
27:58It was easy to isolate the Redcoats and put them under siege.
28:02On the first day of the war,
28:0495 Americans and 273 British had been killed or wounded.
28:10Evidence, if evidence was needed,
28:13that this was planned aggression by the Americans.
28:16All the brutality of a civil war had arrived,
28:20and it certainly wasn't one-sided.
28:23One rebel veteran later commented,
28:26that day was full of horror.
28:28The Patriots seemed maddened and beside themselves.
28:35But why were the Americans so effective
28:37in defeating the 18th century's superpower that day?
28:40GUNSHOT
28:43At a local gun club, I asked George Newman,
28:46an expert on military memorabilia and a historian of the Revolution.
28:50George, what do you think motivated the sort of man
28:53who carried a gun like this?
28:55The English setters would get off the boat,
28:57they'd shift the land through their fingers,
29:00they'd say, this is virgin soil, I can have my own farm,
29:04I can have my own home, my family can own land.
29:08And there was a vitality that came out.
29:10It was an explosion of the human spirit here
29:12that the British didn't fully understand.
29:15This is our home, this is our land, we settled it, we cleared it,
29:18we did the fighting, we did the suffering,
29:20and now they're bringing troops into our town,
29:23endangering my wife, my children, and I'm not going to let that happen.
29:27And that's what turned them on.
29:29And it was a vitality of the new world.
29:33I think there are enormous primal strengths here
29:37in the men that fought at Lexington and Concord.
29:40Strengths which I think do represent
29:43an enduring thread in American society.
29:46We can see this tension between liberty and authority,
29:50and that runs throughout the War of Independence.
29:53And while it would be wrong to say that a New England farmer
29:58is in some way a prototype Viet Cong or Mujahideen,
30:03there are, in all of those three warriors, very similar qualities.
30:17In Boston, Thomas Gage was taking in the enormity of the situation.
30:22He was besieged by 30,000 rebels.
30:26He'd fought alongside these men in the Seven Years' War
30:29and recognised that they were all too serious.
30:32The rebels were not the despicable ravel
30:36too many people have supposed them to be.
30:39But I find it owing to a military spirit,
30:42encouraged amongst them for a few years past,
30:45joined with an uncommon degree of zeal and enthusiasm
30:49that they are otherwise.
30:51In all their wars against the French,
30:54they never showed such conduct,
30:56attention and perseverance as they do now.
31:01And in the midst of this crisis,
31:03he's told that the spy in his headquarters
31:06might even have shared his bed.
31:17My confidence has been betrayed.
31:20I have communicated my desire to one person only.
31:25Gage never revealed the identity of the spy,
31:28but immediately after Concord,
31:30he banished his wife to Britain, out of harm's way.
31:33They were never reconciled again.
31:36It was perhaps the first of many personal betrayals
31:40in this brutal and divisive civil war.
31:50In May 1775, Gage was sent substantial reinforcements,
31:555,000 troops and three generals,
31:58Howe, Clinton and Burgoyne,
32:01to bolster the British cause.
32:04The three new generals arrived aboard a man of war called Cerberus,
32:09named after the mythical dog that guards the underworld.
32:13Some wag showed his classical education by composing a poem.
32:18Behold the Cerberus, the Atlantic plough.
32:21Her precious cargo, Burgoyne, Clinton, Howe.
32:26Bow-wow-wow.
32:30Howe would come to represent
32:32the paradox of British involvement in the war.
32:35He was a Whig Member of Parliament,
32:37whose party and whose constituents
32:39had deep reservations about the struggle.
32:42Yet as a general, he would lead the first British offensive.
32:49With Boston isolated,
32:51the rebels wanted to press home their advantage.
32:54The first pitched battle of the war was about to begin.
32:58This is Bunker Hill,
33:00after which this most famous of battles is named.
33:04But the fighting was actually to take place here on Breed's Hill.
33:10On the night of Friday 16th June 1775,
33:13the rebels occupied Breed's Hill,
33:16building a small fort
33:18and a defensive earthwork stretching north towards the shoreline.
33:23The British were taken by surprise.
33:25In their minds, it was still impossible
33:28for these simple militiamen to construct proper fortifications.
33:33If the Americans were to reinforce their lines,
33:36the British would be in a very weak position indeed.
33:41British warships immediately began to bombard the Redoubt.
33:46And one of their first cannonballs took the head off a militiaman,
33:49causing a panic.
33:52Colonel William Prescott,
33:54one of the senior officers up here in this agglomeration of militias,
33:57was splashed with blood and brains.
34:00It's typical of the divided loyalties that characterised this war
34:04that his loyalist brother-in-law was across the river in Boston with Gage.
34:08And he identified Prescott as the commanding figure up here on the Redoubt.
34:13When Gage asked him whether the rebels would fight,
34:16he replied,
34:18I cannot answer for his men,
34:20but Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell.
34:28Thomas Gage convened a council of war.
34:31Henry Clinton, one of the three EU generals,
34:34suggested cutting off the enemy at the rear,
34:37but he was overruled.
34:39Gage decided on a frontal assault.
34:42After the humiliation of the retreat from Concord,
34:45these stubborn farmers needed to be taught a lesson.
34:48It was time for an 18th century amphibious assault.
34:54On the morning of the 17th,
34:56Major General William Howe led a force of 1,550 men
35:00across the Charles River
35:02and landed on a beach at the eastern end of the peninsula.
35:06His immediate reaction was to call for 700 reinforcements.
35:11He could see that the rebels' entrenchments were packed with men.
35:16American snipers were now causing casualties
35:19from the cover of the abandoned houses of Charlestown.
35:22Howe ordered a bombardment, setting the town ablaze.
35:26He then launched a three-pronged attack,
35:29one column going along the beach
35:31and two straight up the hill in broad daylight.
35:35Howe's six-pounder cannon had been furnished with 12-pound shot.
35:40But he was heard to say, with true British courage,
35:44that they must do as well as they could with muskets.
35:47There would be no hanging about for the correct cannonballs.
35:52GUNFIRE
36:07As the blood-red line of redcoats marched uphill,
36:10a rebel commander was alleged to have uttered the legendary order,
36:14Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.
36:22Don't shoot!
36:25Hold your fire!
36:27At 30 yards range, the Americans fired, with devastating effect.
36:32Fire!
36:40The British were repulsed with severe losses.
36:4396 men lay dead from the beach assault alone.
36:47Things were not going well.
36:49Unsportingly, the Americans were picking off British officers,
36:53easily identifiable by their scarlet rather than their faded red uniforms.
36:58There were times when Howe seemed to be the only commander left on his feet.
37:02His white gaiters were spattered with other men's blood.
37:06GUNFIRE
37:08Thomas Lobster had many vices,
37:11but disciplined courage was one of his virtues.
37:14Twice he'd come up this hill without any cover,
37:17in a strongly defended position,
37:19and twice those tearing volleys had forced him back.
37:22But he was not an easy man to stop.
37:25Fire!
37:33Howe, as usual, led the third assault.
37:36A rebel commented,
37:38They looked too handsome to be fired at, but we had to do it.
37:41As fast as the first man was shot down,
37:44the next stepped forward in his place.
37:47But our men dropped them so fast, they were a long time coming up.
37:51It was surprising how they would step over their dead bodies,
37:54as if they were logs of wood.
37:57The Americans were running dangerously low on ammunition.
38:01And finally, the British stormed the fortifications.
38:15Fire!
38:28The bloody murder of hand-to-hand fighting had begun.
38:32One American said,
38:34After they entered our fort,
38:36they mangled our wounded in the most horrible manner,
38:39running their bayonets through them
38:41and cutting their heads to pieces with the breeches of their guns.
38:45One regular said,
38:47They fought more like devils than men.
38:50The smoke up here was so thick
38:52that when the Americans retreated, they had to feel their way out.
38:56Prescott later said that with just one more round of ammunition apiece,
39:00he might have beaten the British back.
39:03It was that close.
39:06Bunker Hill is sometimes presented as an American moral victory.
39:11But it was really a British tactical victory at huge cost.
39:16The British lost more than 1,000 men,
39:19almost half their attacking force,
39:22twice as many as the Americans.
39:24Gage had paid the full price of a frontal assault.
39:28This was the British Hamburger Hill.
39:33In a Vietnam War battle,
39:35the Americans launched repeated attacks
39:37on heavily fortified Viet Cong positions
39:40to win what was ultimately a Pyrrhic victory.
39:43For both superpowers, 200 years apart,
39:46launching assaults on heavily fortified hilltops
39:50didn't ultimately win the war.
39:52It's often true that the first battles of any war
39:56establish the shape of what's to come.
39:59And that was certainly true here at Bunker Hill.
40:03The British actually won most of the war's battles,
40:06often by that combination of dogged, bloody-minded courage
40:09that we've seen here.
40:11But they were never good at joining the battles up
40:14into some sort of strategic plan.
40:16Somehow there was no killer punch.
40:24The British, secure in Boston and supplied by sea,
40:28settled down for a winter of waiting.
40:30The siege had begun in earnest.
40:36The conflict was already shifting into another gear.
40:39Away from Boston, American rebels attacked Canada
40:43to strike at Britain's weakest point.
40:46Their hope was that the large French population
40:49would rise up against the British.
40:51The war was already spreading.
40:55In Philadelphia, the rebels met
40:59under the banner of the Second Continental Congress
41:03to discuss strategy and determine policy.
41:06The task facing the radicals, especially those from New England
41:11who'd done most of the fighting,
41:13was how to persuade the more cautious states
41:16to support the armed struggle.
41:18How to achieve a compromise between 13 disparate states
41:23radical northerners and more conservative southerners.
41:27The solution was the creation of a new professional army
41:32with contingents from all 13 states, but controlled by Congress.
41:37The Continental Army was born.
41:40The job of forging this army fell to its new commander.
41:44A slave plantation owner,
41:47George Washington seems an unlikely figurehead
41:50in the cause of liberty.
41:53A colonial officer who'd had his application for regular commission
41:57turned down by the British,
41:59he didn't inspire confidence in many of his peers.
42:02Fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson said
42:05that his mind was not of the first order,
42:08being little aided by invention or imagination,
42:11but sure in conclusion.
42:13To some, he seemed almost like an American General Gage.
42:18Even though the militias had ignited the Massachusetts Revolution,
42:22Washington knew that they would not be able to prosecute a war.
42:26On his arrival outside Boston,
42:28he was exasperated by their indiscipline
42:31and the disorganised state of their camps.
42:34The abuses in this army, I fear, are considerable,
42:38and the new modelling of it in the face of an enemy
42:41from whom we every hour expect attack
42:43is exceedingly difficult and dangerous.
42:46He set to work selecting able officers and mobilising sympathisers.
42:51The Americans' greatest fear was a British breakout from Boston,
42:55so they wanted to strike first.
42:58Washington even proposed a daring attack
43:01across the iced-over Charles River,
43:03but his plan was vetoed.
43:05But whatever the Americans did
43:07was going to have to be really innovative
43:10if it was going to shift the well-dug-in British.
43:13The Americans knew that if they could get heavy guns
43:16onto a hill overlooking Boston,
43:19they could make the town untenable.
43:22But where was a ragged rebel army like this
43:25to get heavy artillery from?
43:29In the winter of 1775,
43:31Washington sent General Henry Knox,
43:34a former Boston bookseller,
43:36to Fort Ticonderoga in the northern wilderness
43:39up on the Canadian border
43:41to retrieve a captured arsenal of 44 cannon, 14 mortars and a howitzer.
43:50Getting to Ticonderoga was one thing.
43:54But bringing the cannon some 300 miles across a frozen landscape,
43:58a lake and the Hudson River, was something else.
44:02With an effort that Hannibal might have been proud of,
44:05Knox brought back all but one of the guns.
44:09The next problem was how to get them here,
44:12to the chosen spot on Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston,
44:16and then to protect them from the fire of the experienced British artillery.
44:21With the ground frozen,
44:23there could be no repeat of the entrenchment of Breed's Hill,
44:27where fortifications had been thrown up practically overnight.
44:31A different solution was called for.
44:34Model maker Jim Cook is an expert on how the course of history
44:38was about to be changed by prefabs.
44:41These are bundles of sticks?
44:43The bundles of sticks, ideally they were anywhere from 8 to 20 feet long.
44:47Four foot thick is probably pistol-proof,
44:49eight foot thick is grape and musket-proof.
44:52You can go up to 20 feet thick if you need it.
44:55It must have been extraordinarily labour-intensive making all these.
44:5810,000 bundles.
45:0010,000 bundles?
45:02We don't know exactly how many frames, but quite a bit.
45:05All put up here in one night?
45:07All assembled in one night.
45:09It took 360 team of oxen, two or three trips,
45:12and it took 2,000 labourers with a break in shifts
45:15and another 2,000 labourers at three in the morning to relieve them.
45:18How strong was it by first light?
45:20By first light at dawn they said it was pistol-proof.
45:23By noon it was cannon-proof.
45:25It's a tremendous feat.
45:27It was like the Great Pyramid appeared overnight.
45:30One British engineer officer said
45:32it would take 15,000 to 20,000 men minimum to build this fort overnight.
45:36It took fewer men,
45:38but they had been packing it away in the countryside for months before.
45:42It was a total surprise.
45:44And if General Howe was ever thinking of leaving,
45:47this just, like, made up his mind for it.
45:49Yeah, I can see why.
45:53The guns were in such a strong and elevated position on Dorchester Heights
45:57that the rebels now had the artillery supremacy that they'd been looking for.
46:01The next morning, Thomas Lobster would be in for a surprise.
46:08The British were stunned by the fortification of the Dorchester Heights.
46:12An indignant General Howe commented,
46:15the rebels have done more in one night than my army could have done in months.
46:20On 17 March 1776,
46:23the British garrison of Boston was evacuated by sea
46:26to Halifax, Nova Scotia,
46:28taking more than 1,000 loyal Bostonians with it.
46:42And what of the lead characters
46:44in this opening chapter of the American Revolution?
46:47Thomas Gage, that man of reason and moderation,
46:51was recalled to Britain late in 1775.
46:55Paul Revere and Sam Adams were to become icons of the Revolution,
46:59but never again did they take centre stage.
47:04Already the more conservative forces, represented by George Washington,
47:08who cared more about winning the war than social revolution,
47:12were taking over.
47:14Over a year after the war began,
47:17the Americans had still not declared their independence,
47:20but by the summer of 1776,
47:23they were ready to make the final break.
47:29On 4 July, the American colonies declared their independence,
47:34at just the moment that a British invasion force
47:37of more than 30,000 men landed south of New York.
47:41The stage seemed set for a battle between ideals and might.
47:47But the reality, like that of most civil wars,
47:51was to be far uglier.
47:53The Declaration of Independence
47:55was first read to Bostonians from this balcony.
47:58It provided the ideological underpinning for the struggle,
48:03but it remained to be seen how American ideals
48:06would live up to a bloody and brutal civil war.
48:21DRUMMING
48:51DRUMMING