Gunpowder The American Revolutionary War
The Battle of Bunker Hill, 1775
| Battle | Bunker Hill |
|---|---|
| Date | 17 June 1775 |
| War | The American Revolutionary War |
| Location | Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, across the water from Boston, Massachusetts |
| Belligerents | The British Army vs the colonial militia of New England |
| Commanders | Major General William Howe (Britain) vs Colonel William Prescott, with Doctor Joseph Warren † serving in the ranks as a volunteer (colonial) |
| Strength | Roughly 2,200 to 3,000 British regulars, landed in waves and attacking three times; something over a thousand colonial militia holding a redoubt dug the night before, short of powder from the outset |
| Outcome | A British victory that took the ground and settled nothing: the costliest single engagement the British fought in the entire war |
| British losses | 1,054, of whom 89 were officers, a proportion that alarmed the British command more than the total did |
| Colonial losses | About 450, of whom 140 were killed and 271 wounded, among them Joseph Warren, killed in the redoubt, with about 30 taken |
The Account
The hill was not there the previous evening. That is what the British woke up to on the seventeenth of June, 1775: a redoubt on the high ground across the water, dug overnight by men working in the dark with picks, close enough to Boston that guns placed in it would reach the fleet.
It was on Breed’s Hill rather than Bunker Hill, which is the first thing anyone learns about this battle and the last thing anyone remembers. The militia had been ordered to fortify one and fortified the other, closer to the water and harder to defend, and then had to be reinforced there because the work was done and could not be undone in daylight.
Howe landed in the afternoon with something over two thousand regulars and made the decision that decided the day. He would go straight at it. Not around the flank, not a siege, not a bombardment: a frontal advance in line, in the open, uphill, in wool, each man carrying near enough sixty pounds of kit, across ground broken by fences and long grass, in June heat.
I want to be fair to him, because he is usually written about as a fool. The British Army had spent a generation learning that a line of regulars advancing steadily broke militia, because it nearly always did. It had worked everywhere. He was applying the rule.
The rule did not hold that afternoon. The men behind that earth wall were short of powder, and being short of powder makes soldiers deliberate. They were told to wait, and told again, and the officers walked the line making them wait, and the story that somebody said not to fire until they could see the whites of their eyes may or may not be exactly what was said. Something like it was. The effect is not in doubt.
The British came up twice and were broken both times at close range by volleys delivered at a distance where nothing misses. They re-formed under fire, in the open, having watched what happened, and came a third time. And the third time the redoubt had nothing left to fire, and it was taken with bayonets, and the militia went back over the neck with the British too spent to follow.
Howe held the ground. He had one thousand and fifty-four casualties out of somewhere between two thousand two hundred and three thousand engaged, and eighty-nine of them were officers, which is the number that frightened London when it arrived. The colonials had four hundred and eleven, one of them Joseph Warren, who was a doctor and the president of the provincial congress and had been commissioned a general three days before, and who declined the command and went into the redoubt with a musket as a private volunteer, and was killed there in the last minutes.
Every British officer who wrote about it afterwards wrote the same sentence in different words: another victory like that and we have no army. It was the first major engagement of the war. It ran eight more years and they lost it.
There is a thing that happens on ground like that which the histories cannot record because it is not a fact about the battle. Every man who came up that slope on the third attempt had already watched the first two. He knew the distance. He knew what waited at the top of it. And he went, in step, dressing on the man beside him, because that was the arrangement, and because the man beside him was going.
I do not admire it. Admiration is not mine to give. But I notice it, and I have noticed it in every army I have ever walked with, and it is the single most consistent thing about your species.
Behind the Song
The Song
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Why the British side
This is the only track in the catalog told from inside the army the audience is expected to be against, and it was a deliberate choice rather than an accident of drafting.
The mode is short staccato fragments in a we POV, told from the British side. Read the verses and the pronouns do the work: we march, our ranks, our dead, and in the third verse the rebels break at last. An American listener meets a song about the first battle of their revolution in which they are the enemy and are named as rebels.
The point is not provocation. It is that Bunker Hill is remembered as a moral victory for one side and was, on the ground, an afternoon in which around a thousand men in red coats were killed or wounded walking uphill in the heat. A song from the colonial side would be about defiance, which is well covered elsewhere on this record. From the British side it is about obedience, which is rarer and harder.
The song, against the history
Verse 1 is the approach, and the fragments are doing the marching. “We march beneath the sun” is mid-afternoon in June, and the British went in across open ground in full kit in that heat. “Their lines stand sharp and still, eyes hard, breath held” is the militia holding fire, which is the tactical fact the whole battle turns on: the defenders were critically short of powder, so they were held until the range was too short to waste a shot.
“She watches from Bunker Hill” is a nice piece of misdirection that happens to be geographically exact. The battle was fought on Breed’s Hill. Bunker Hill is the height behind it, where the militia had been ordered to dig and did not. Putting her on Bunker Hill puts her on the hill the battle is named for and was not fought on, watching from the position everyone assumes the action was at.
The chorus is the odd one on this record, and its oddness is the point. “All our mortal triumphs rise and echo into time” is the only unambiguously triumphal chorus in the catalog, and it belongs to the side that took 1,054 casualties in an afternoon and lost the war. It is not ironic in the delivery. It is the thing those men actually believed while they were walking, sung straight, and the record leaves the listener to do the arithmetic.
Verse 2 is the first two assaults. “But still they rise to fight, shots crack, stones leap, their volleys tear our ranks, smoke blinds, men fall” is what happened twice, at close range, to formations that had been told this would not happen.
Verse 3 is the third assault, and it is correct that the redoubt fell to weight rather than to fire. “The rebels break at last” is the outcome, and the reason is that the defenders had run out of powder rather than out of resolve; the position was carried with bayonets. “She counts the price we pay” immediately follows the victory, which is the song declining to let the capture stand as the ending.
One absence, and why it is one. Joseph Warren is not in this song. He is the most written-about casualty of the battle: a doctor and political leader, newly commissioned a major general, who refused command and fought in the redoubt as a volunteer and was killed in its last minutes. A song from the colonial side would be obliged to include him. This one cannot see him, because from the British side he was one more body in a captured earthwork, and was not identified for months.
The outro is three lines and it is the whole record in miniature. “The day resumes its breath, the world turns on again, and she alone remembers where we fell.” The song has just won. The outro says what winning is worth.
Lyrics
[Verse 1] We march beneath the sun, Drums roll, Hearts pound, The hill awaits our fire, Smoke builds, Winds shift, Their lines stand sharp and still, Eyes hard, Breath held, She watches from Bunker Hill, Veil dark, Hands cold,
[Pre-Chorus] Her whisper chills the smoke, Dim light, Slow breath, She stands within the silence just before the fates align
[Chorus] Turn the world once more Let the heavens bear our cry All our mortal triumphs rise and echo into time
Turn the world once more Let the shadows break and climb All our mortal triumphs rise and echo into time
[Verse 2] We march into their sights, Lines hold, Hearts brace, But still they rise to fight, Shots crack, Stones leap, Their volleys tear our ranks, Smoke blinds, Men fall, She walks beside our dead, Steps fade, Eyes dim,
[Verse 3] We storm the earthen crest, Steel gleams, Shouts rise, The rebels break at last, Guns fade, Cries hush, The redoubt drowns in smoke, Blood soaks, Flags rise, She counts the price we pay, Her veil lifts, Souls bow,
[Outro] The day resumes its breath The world turns on again And she alone remembers where we fell
Part of Gunpowder The Gunpowder Chronicles All battles, in order