What happened at the battles of Lexington and Concord?

What tensions led to the battles at Lexington and Concord?

In 1775, Britain’s 13 American colonies ran along the east coast from Massachusetts in the north to Georgia in the south. Each was administered by a royal governor, his council and an elected colonial assembly.

After defeating the French in North America in the early 1760s, in part during the Seven Years' War, Britain wanted to increase taxes in America and make the colonies pay for their own defence. Using the slogan ‘No taxation without representation’, the colonists argued that only their own assemblies, and not the British parliament, had a right to levy taxes. Tensions rose.

December 1773 saw the colonists dump a cargo of British tea into the harbour, in protest of Britain’s attempt to tax imports – the Boston Tea Party. The government responded by closing the port of Boston, dissolving the colonial assembly and placing Massachusetts under military rule.

Believing both their liberty and economic prosperity to be under threat, the colonists took action. They set up their own continental assembly, took over their local militias and started stockpiling military supplies.

Lexington and Concord: quick facts

Who fought? British regulars: 1,500, American colonial militia: 3,500

When? 19 April 1775, the date most often cited as the start of the American Revolutionary War

Where? Middlesex County, Massachusetts, modern-day USA

Why were the battles fought? A skirmish in response to a British bid to seize American militia supplies

What was the result? Most sources agree that the battles ended in a British defeat

Who was Paul Revere and why did he ride?

Paul Revere was a silversmith and member of the group of colonists known as the Sons of Liberty who actively resisted British rule. He had been an influential figure in fanning the flames of revolution with his engraving depicting the 1770 Boston Massacre which was widely shared in the aftermath, and he was present at the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

Thanks to Henry Longfellow’s poem of 1861, Paul Revere’s Ride, the messenger is best known for the part he played in warning Lexington of the impending arrival of the British in 1775. But there was much more to the extraordinary man’s life.

A Boston silversmith of partly French descent, Revere dabbled in dentistry and was also an engraver, printing the new country’s first paper money. An active opponent of British rule, he took part in the Boston Tea Party.

His military career was spectacularly unsuccessful. He was court-martialled (but acquitted) for his part in a disastrous expedition against the British in what is now Maine. After the war, he opened America’s first copper-rolling mill and eventually died, aged 83, in 1818. Twice married, he had fathered 16 children.

What happened at Lexington and Concord?

Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith was chosen to lead a flying column of British redcoats into the small town. Smith chose his men well.

He selected the elite grenadiers (the toughest) and light infantry (the swiftest) from a number of regiments, building a force of about 700. To avoid a lengthy roundabout march out of Boston, Smith’s men were ferried across the Charles River in barges and, after wading ashore through waist-deep water, the soggy troops began their march on Concord at about 2am.

Gage and Smith had hoped for secrecy and surprise, but they weren’t to get their way. As the redcoats approached, the ominous sound of church bells rang through the night; the people of Massachusetts knew something was up.

Dr Joseph Warren, a Boston resident and a key opponent of the King’s rule, had been informed by a sympathiser within the British command (possibly Margaret, Gage’s American born wife) that a raid was going to take place. Warren sent two riders, tanner William Dawes and silversmith Paul Revere, to spread the word. To make doubly sure the message got through, two lanterns were lit in the tower of Boston’s Old North Church – a pre-arranged signal meaning the British were to cross the Charles River by boat.

Dawes and Revere initially took different routes to Lexington, a few miles east of Concord, where two key revolutionary leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were staying. Concerned that the radicals might, in fact, be the true targets of the British raid, Revere and Dawes persuaded the two to flee. The messengers then set off for Concord, meeting a third rider, Samuel Prescott, on the way.

There is, incidentally, no evidence to support the myth that Revere rode about shouting “The British are coming”. Indeed, if he had, it would been confusing, as colonial Americans at that time considered themselves British. In the event, only Prescott made it to Concord. Revere was captured by the British, while Dawes was thrown from his horse and had to walk to Lexington.

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But the riders had done their job. Other messengers were now spreading the word and militiamen from all over the county were hurriedly mustering and heading to intercept the redcoats. By the time Britain’s Lieutenant Colonel Smith and his men had reached Menotomy (now Arlington), it was clear that the enemy had stirred up a hornet’s nest, and Concord was still more than ten miles away.

Before heading on, Smith sent a message back to Gage calling for reinforcements. Gage duly ordered Lord Percy to take his brigade (about 800 men) to help the redcoats on the road to Concord but, thanks to a misunderstanding, there was a four-hour delay before Percy set off.

Meanwhile, Smith’s column was cautiously approaching the town of Lexington. Learning that there might be opposition on the road ahead, Smith ordered Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines to take the light infantry into the town.

The Sun was just beginning to rise as Pitcairn’s men entered the little town. There, drawn up on the green, were about 77 American militiamen, under the command of Captain John Parker. A veteran of the French and Indian Wars, Parker was dying of consumption and, in fact, had only five months to live.

Initially neither side wanted to fight. Parker’s tiny force was heavily outnumbered and, knowing that most of the supplies at Concord had by now been hidden, he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice his men for no purpose. So he positioned his men carefully, in plain sight to make a point, but not actively seeking confrontation by blocking the road. In Parker’s eyes, if there was going to be any fighting, the British would have to start it.

Pitcairn also wanted to avoid bloodshed. He called on Parker’s militia to disperse but, before they could, a shot rang out

Who fired the first shot at Lexington?

Nobody knows who fired that fateful shot but, in the ensuing confusion, the British fired a volley and charged with fixed bayonets.

When the smoke cleared, eight militiamen lay dead on the green and a further ten had been wounded. One redcoat had been hurt. Soon after, Smith rode into Lexington. He was horrified to learn what had happened. Using a drummer to recall Pitcairn’s scattered troops, who were busy chasing the surviving militiamen, he reformed his column and pushed on to Concord. They arrived at about 7am.

The colonists had, perhaps, 300 militiamen in Concord but, rather than fight there, they pulled back across a bridge to the north of the town where they waited for their reinforcements. The redcoats set about searching the town for the weapons and ammunition they had come to confiscate, unaware that much had already been spirited away. They did, however, find three large cannons, which they rendered unusable by destroying their trunnions (axles), as well as hoards of flour and musket balls, which they dumped in the town pond. Other supplies and pieces of equipment were set alight. But this was to have unexpected consequences.

On seeing the billowing smoke, the colonial militia on the other side of the river assumed that the British had set fire to the town and, now about 500 strong, they began to advance towards the bridge that led back into Concord.

The 100 light infantrymen guarding the bridge fired one volley at the militiamen. The Americans replied with a volley of their own – this took the lives of the first British soldiers to fall that day and, after the great poet Ralph Waldo Emerson coined the phrase, became known as the “shot heard round the world”.

Outgunned, the Brits fell back. Smith’s men had been searching Concord for four hours, but now it was time to retreat. Some 2,000 militiamen were in the area, with more arriving every minute. The British formed up and set off on the return to Boston. It was then that their nightmare began.

At first, the militiamen simply shadowed the British, but they now had sufficient numbers to inflict real damage. They began sniping at the redcoats from behind stone walls, houses, sheds, trees and bushes. In their scarlet coats, as opposed to the dull red of the ordinary soldiers, Smith’s officers made distinctive targets. With his men being picked off, Smith began to lose control.

Many of his troops cast away their equipment to retreat more quickly as they ran the gauntlet of colonial fire. By the time it reached Lexington, the column was near to total collapse.

Had it not been for Lord Percy who was waiting for them at Lexington with his brigade of redcoats and a couple of cannons, Smith’s men might not have made it back to Boston at all. Despite being short of ammunition, Percy covered the rest of the retreat with some skill, sending groups of men into the fields on each side of the Boston road to keep the colonists as far away as possible and using his two cannons whenever he could.

Even so, the militiamen continued to harass the British. They were fired upon almost all the way back to the Charles River where, to the relief of the exhausted redcoats, the Royal Navy was waiting to ferry them to safety. The British had lost 73 killed, 174 wounded and 26 missing on the retreat. American casualties were about 90.

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Who won at Lexington and Concord?

Militarily, Lexington and Concord had been a minor defeat for the British, but it had been a major disaster politically.

Smith’s raid had caused the very fighting it was intended to prevent and the B1ritish army had caused bloodshed on American soil. What’s more, the casualties suffered from an often unseen enemy, together with the belief that one of their comrades had been scalped, would lead them to commit a number of atrocities against the locals – a fact widely reported by their enemies.

All this helped turn resentment into outright rebellion. And when it came to fighting, the colonists had proved that they could stand up to the redcoats, a fact not lost on Lord Percy: “Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken.”

What happened after the battles at Lexington and Concord?

Encouraged by their initial success, the American rebels surrounded Boston, where their army started to gain many new recruits. Despite winning a costly victory at Bunker Hill in June, the British were forced to abandon Boston the following March, although they balanced this with the capture New York by the end of the year.

In July 1776, representatives of the 13 American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. The French joined the war in 1777, as allies of the Americans – they were later joined by both the Spanish and Dutch.

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