How Did the American Revolution Start?

Summary

Title: How Did the American Revolution Start?
Podcast: Dan Snow's History Hit
Host: History Hit
Release Date: April 20, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled "How Did the American Revolution Start?", historian Dan Snow delves deep into the pivotal events and underlying factors that ignited the American Revolution. By examining both the political tensions and military maneuvers of 1775, Snow provides a comprehensive understanding of how the colonies transitioned from peaceful protests to armed conflict, ultimately forging the path toward American independence.

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Historical Context and Prelude to Revolution

Demographics and Society in the Thirteen Colonies (00:02:08 - 00:28:29)

Dan Snow begins by setting the stage, describing the demographic landscape of the thirteen British colonies in North America. With a population of approximately 2.5 million, half a million of whom were Black—90% of whom were enslaved—the colonies experienced rapid population growth through high birth rates and massive immigration. This growth significantly outnumbered the indigenous population, which stood at around 250,000 east of the Mississippi.

Snow emphasizes the unique societal structure of the colonies, contrasting it with Britain and Ireland. Unlike the hierarchical British society dominated by aristocrats and a significant proportion of impoverished individuals, American society was more egalitarian. Approximately two-thirds of white American men owned land, fostering a spirit of individualism and autonomy that was less prevalent in Britain, where only about 15% of white men could vote.

Roots of Colonial Independence (00:28:29 - 00:58:37)

The desire for self-governance was deeply ingrained in the colonial psyche, shaped by factors such as landownership, religion, and geography. Independent churches and the necessity of building new communities in a vast wilderness contributed to a collective resistance against external control, particularly from distant authorities like the British Parliament and the Anglican hierarchy.

Snow highlights the escalating tensions during the 1760s and 1770s, focusing on disputes over taxation without representation. The infamous Boston Tea Party emerged as a direct protest against the tax on tea, embodying the colonial belief in the "ancient inalienable right of all Englishmen to be taxed only with the consent of their representatives."

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Escalation of Tensions and British Response

Intolerable Acts and Colonial Resistance (00:58:37 - 02:08:29)

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament enacted the Coercive Acts (known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies), which included the closure of Boston Harbor and the suspension of Massachusetts' charter, effectively placing the province under military rule. These punitive measures further alienated the colonists, who viewed them as blatant infringements on their rights and autonomy.

Snow discusses the Quebec Act of 1774, which extended British administration into the Midwest and restricted American westward expansion, causing additional discontent among the land-hungry and predominantly Protestant colonists. This act was perceived not merely as administrative housekeeping but as a direct threat to colonial ambitions and religious freedoms.

Formation of Militia and Shadow Governments (02:08:29 - 28:29)

The colonies began organizing militias and shadow governments to resist British rule. In Massachusetts Bay, General Thomas Gage was appointed as the governor and commander of British forces, arriving with 4,000 troops. However, Gage soon realized the inadequacy of British resources to quell the growing rebellion. He attempted minor raids to seize military supplies, but the widespread defiance among the colonists made larger military interventions unfeasible without substantial reinforcements.

Snow underscores a critical turning point in 1774 when the American colonies effectively dissolved their former arrangements with the British Crown, establishing independent governments and militias. This act of defiance marked the British Empire in North America as irreversibly lost to rebellion.

Notable Quote:
"In 1774, peacefully but robustly, the Americans simply de facto dissolved their former arrangements with the British Crown. They did the most Revolutionary thing that any of us can do. It's the nuclear option."
— Dan Snow (28:29)

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The Road to Lexington and Concord

British Expedition to Seize Supplies (28:29 - 60:32)

On April 18, 1775, General Gage ordered a secret expedition to Concord to seize and destroy colonial military supplies. Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, the mission was compromised, leading to the British troops' departure from Boston under mounting tensions and logistical challenges.

Snow narrates the arduous journey of the British troops, highlighting their exhaustion, inadequate provisions, and the unfavorable terrain they had to navigate. Upon reaching Lexington, they encountered a small group of militiamen, leading to the first exchange of gunfire—the "shot heard round the world."

Notable Quote:
"It was midnight. They'd only received their orders two hours previously. And even then, the vast majority of them had no idea where they were going."
— Dan Snow (02:08:29)

Paul Revere and the Warning System (37:24 - 58:35)

The episode delves into the famous midnight rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes, who alerted colonial leaders and militia of the approaching British forces. Revere's capture and subsequent release, along with Dawes' efforts, exemplify the effective and widespread communication network established by the colonists.

Notable Quote:
"William Dawes was a Boston tanner. He's the one who managed to slip out of town via the neck at 9pm, and he made for Lexington to warn senior provincial figures that they might face arrest the following day."
— Dan Snow (37:34)

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The Battle of Lexington and Concord

Initial Confrontation at Lexington (58:35 - 75:29)

As dawn broke on April 19, 1775, British troops entered Lexington, expecting to find a large militia. Instead, they faced around 70 militiamen. Tensions escalated when a shot was fired—its origin remains unknown—prompting the British to open fire, resulting in the first casualties of the conflict.

Notable Quote:
"A shot rang out, and no one knows who, and no one knows why. And obviously afterwards, both sides blamed each other."
— Dan Snow (55:05)

The confusion and panic among the British led to disorder on their ranks, while the militiamen—motivated by recent atrocities and the desire for revenge—pulled back strategically rather than engaging in prolonged combat.

Strategic Retreat and Growing Militia Force (75:29 - 80:54)

British forces, suffering losses and facing an increasingly determined and expansive militia, attempted to retreat to Boston. However, the colonial militias, now numbering around 14,000, continued to harass and ambush the retreating troops along their return journey. The disciplined British army struggled with low morale, insufficient ammunition, and persistent ambushes, leading to significant casualties.

Notable Quote:
"The British shot first."
— Dan Snow (54:34)

Conclusion of the Battle (80:54 - 83:43)

The day concluded with British forces being forced back to Boston, suffering heavy losses and realizing the futility of attempting to suppress the rebellion militarily without overwhelming resources. The aftermath saw the consolidation of colonial militias into the Continental Army, led by George Washington, marking the official commencement of the American Revolutionary War.

Notable Quote:
"It was the shot heard around the world. This was the shot that signaled the start of a war in the Americas, a war of liberation, but also a civil war, a terrible conflict that would forge the USA itself."
— Dan Snow (55:24)

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Aftermath and Long-term Consequences

Following the battles of Lexington and Concord, the British recognized the serious challenge posed by the American colonies. With limited military resources, the British found it impossible to quell the rebellion through conventional means. The successes of the colonial militias bolstered American morale and unity, leading to the formation of a dedicated Continental Army and the eventual pursuit of independence.

Snow reflects on the strategic miscalculations of the British and the resilience of the American colonists, emphasizing how the events of April 19, 1775, set the stage for a global conflict that would reshape nations and ideologies.

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Closing Remarks and Future Episodes

Dan Snow concludes the episode by inviting listeners to subscribe to History Hit's TV channel, which features documentaries on significant Revolutionary War events such as Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and the siege of Boston. He also teases future explorations of events like George Washington's daring maneuvers during the war.

Notable Quote:
"Lord Percy warned in a letter home. You may depend on it that as the rebels have now had time to prepare, they are determined to go through with it. Nor will the insurrection here turn out so despicable as it is perhaps imagined at home."
— Dan Snow (82:29)

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Conclusion

"How Did the American Revolution Start?" offers a thorough examination of the complex interplay of social, political, and military factors that led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Through vivid narration and detailed analysis, Dan Snow brings to life the struggles and determination of the early American colonists, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of this transformative period in history.

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Note: Advertisements and non-content sections have been omitted to focus solely on the substantive historical narrative provided in the podcast episode.

Transcript

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[Dan Snow]

There was so little room in the boats that the men had to stand bolt upright as the sailors heaved on the oars. Crossing Boston Harbor. They landed just outside Charleston, but landed is probably a misnomer here. They came ashore on marshes. They had to wade through waist deep water and then stagger through freezing mud until they truly came to land drier ground. It was spring in New England, but that can be an elastic concept, covers pretty much everything from icebound to strangely warm, and tonight was definitely closer to the former. Steam rose off the cursing, stumbling red coats as they Made for the solid ground, their legendary uniformity nowhere to be seen as the mass of young men floundered about in this unfamiliar terrain. It was midnight. They'd only received their orders two hours previously. And even then, the vast majority of them had no idea where they were going. Only that there was to be no bed or warm embrace of a lover tonight. Instead, there was the mud, the cold, and as soon became obvious, a welcome committee of angry rebels. Their secret mission had been blown before they'd even left the city. Riders had galloped through the night. Lights had shone from belfries, Church bells had rung. Warning shots had been fired in Massachusetts Bay in 1775. News could travel a lot faster even than the British light infantry. The redcoats had been hurried off the boats. They'd been chivied through the mud. But now, in the immortal tradition of the British army, they had to wait. They had to wait for the second wave of troops to be rowed over by the navy. They had to wait for their supplies. They had to wait for officers to try and impose order on the hundreds of men from different units that had been deployed. And while they waited, their enemies activated carefully laid plans. If the redcoats were tired and angry now, in 20 hours time, well, their world will be turned upside down. They would march out into the Massachusetts countryside, into a land in the grip of a tense, brittle peace. They marched back through the jaws of war. They would see comrades riddled with musket balls or beaten down with sharp edged steel. They would abandon wounded men as the starving survivors staggered back to Boston. Their mouths would be bone dry from the gunpowder as they bit through countless cartridges, firing and reloading their weapons until their ammunition was spent. Their feet would be raw after marching close to the distance of a modern double marathon. Their haversacks empty of food, cartridge bags empty of shot after hours of rolling combat. But in those early hours that morning, no one knew what lay in store for them or for the great sweep of British and American history. It was April 19, 1775, 250 years before the release of this podcast. And those redcoats were on their way to Lexington and Concord. And the world would never be the same. You're listening to Dan Snow's history Hit. This is the story of that fateful day. Enjoy. By the spring of 1775, the time for talking. Well, it was almost over. The relationship between Britain and its American colonies, well, a key group of them was almost over. Let's have a quick recap about how we got to this point. We're Talking about the 13 British colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America. So not the Caribbean colonies or the colonies in what is now Canada. We're talking about those colonies that would become the founder members of the United States of America. They spread around 1200 miles from what is now Maine to Georgia. There are about two and a half million people in those colonies. That number doubles every 25 years. High rates of childbirth and massive immigration. We should say half a million of those people were black and 90% of those black people were enslaved. Those black and white colonists massively outnumbered the indigenous population of the eastern portion of North America. There were probably by that stage only around quarter of a million, so 250,000 indigenous people living east of the Mississippi. The white population, who were socially, militarily, economically politically dominant, were overwhelmingly drawn from Britain and Ireland. But society in North America was different. It was a little bit flatter, a little bit more egalitarian. There were very few British aristocrats, the sort of massively wealthy landowners who ruled like little kings in their regions. The men who dominated Britain and Ireland politically, for example. There are also fewer utterly penniless poor people. Something like 2/3 of white Americans own land. That compares with 20% back in Britain. And related to that, importantly, it meant that whereas around 2/3 of white American men could vote in Britain, and historians like to argue about this, but certainly it was only a fraction of that in Britain. Perhaps 15% of white men could vote in England, but that figure may have been much lower, and it was certainly much lower in Scotland. Very few voters there, partly out of being a homeowner and a voter, but even more just generally. There was a spirit of individualism, of independence I think you call it in those colonies that sprang from landowning, it sprang from religion, and it sprang from geography. Many American colonials worshipped at independent churches, self governing churches. These were not enmeshed in the Episcopalian hierarchy, a world of bishops and archbishops with the king at the top that you get in the Anglican faith. They had their local pastor. They had their individual relationship with God and his scriptures. They were conditioned not to follow instructions from some distant bishop's seat or bishop's palace that could be hundreds or even thousands of miles away. That very important sense of religious autonomy that was sustained, it was sometimes created by the nature of those communities. These people had left Britain. Hell, many of these people had left Philadelphia, Boston and New York. They'd headed in land. They'd gone to clear forestry and to hack farmland out of the wilderness. To build new communities afresh. These were the very people, or certainly their descendants, who chafed under the harnesses, the restrictions of life in the old world. They often didn't want their local landowner, their local bishop, the heavy hand of government in their lives. They were happy to take their chances with their brothers and their cousins and their friends in tight knit communities on the edge of civilization. So if you or your revered granddaddy or your beloved father moved from Reading into England or Stirling in Scotland or Norfolk to rural Massachusetts, you're probably not the kind of person queuing up to take instructions to accept prayer books or to submit to a standardized prayer book or a summons to taxation from a government across the Atlantic Ocean. The more I think about it, I guess the very act of building colonies in this new world was revolutionary. Their desire to get away, to create something new for autonomy, was baked into that founding ideal. It's part of their DNA. In 1775, that spirit, that revolutionary desire for autonomy was embodied in the colony of Massachusetts Bay and in its main settlement, the city of Boston. About 15,000 people in Boston. It was a hotbed of the revolution and it was the capital of a wider province that had around 375,000 people in it. There had been a bitter dispute in the 1760s and 1770s about whether or not the British Parliament could impose taxes on the king's subjects in the Americas. The problem was that there were colonial assemblies, there were little parliaments in each colony, and they saw themselves as equal to parliament. The British Parliament, though, thought it had a sort of pan imperial role, particularly when it came to regulating imperial trade. Yes, Parliament accepted. It may not be able to sort of whack an income tax on the people of North Carolina, for example, but it could announce a tariff on sugar to regulate trade within the whole empire, to protect the whole empire, for example, from nasty French sugar from their Caribbean islands like Guadeloupe. That revenue could then go into things like ensuring imperial defence. So after much back and forth, various taxes were proposed, various taxes were abandoned, except for one. A tax on tea. An angry crowd stormed aboard ships carrying tea in Boston harbor and they threw that tea into the sea. They threw it into the water. It became known as the infamous Boston Tea Party. These Americans declared that it was the ancient inalienable right of all Englishmen to be taxed only with the consent of their representatives, only with their own consent. Basically, they would agree to pay tax if in turn, it was agreed upon by the representatives in their legislatures. Back in Britain, the king and much of the political class disagreed. In fact, they got quite angry. The Americans were famously undertaxed. Their fellow Britons in London, Shropshire and Glasgow paid more tax. Britain had spent millions of pounds protecting Americans from the French in Canada, from the indigenous people that periodically rose up in resistance to the ever expanding British colonies in North America. And now the Americans were refusing to pay anything to contribute to those efforts or contribute to imperial policing. The reason the Boston Tea Party is so celebrated today is because it really marked the point of no return. And the reason for that is the British overreaction. The British went bonkers in response to the Boston Tea Party, and Britain and America, I think, from that point were locked onto a path that led to violence. The British passed what they called the Coercive Acts, the Americans called the Intolerable Acts. And the British very foolishly believed that a strong show of force would bring the colonials back to their centre. It would divide the sort of radicals from your common and garden centrist dad, who would step up to the brink and would shy away. At that point, the Americans would be brought back to obedience through coercion. Boston port was closed now, in a world before decent roads, before canals and trains and planes, obviously that means total economic blockade. Nearly everything arrives into Boston by boat. The Brits went even further. The charter of Massachusetts, its constitution was just suspended. The assembly, so its Parliament, was disbanded. Massachusetts Bay was effectively placed under military rule. London appointed a new governor, but he was also to be commander of the British army in North America. He was an out and out soldier. His name was Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. He'd fought the French in Europe, he'd fought the Jacobite rebels in the Highlands of Scotland, he'd fought in the American wilderness. He'd weirdly fought, fought alongside. He served and befriended colonial troops, men like George Washington. He was from an aristocratic background, he had impeccable breeding and he arrived with 4,000 soldiers. Another of these Acts of Parliament specified that in certain cases, certain crimes, the people would be tried not in the place where they happened in the Americas, but back in Britain. So this was seen as interfering again in a kind of tyrannical fashion, with traditional English rights around trial and punishment. To make matters even worse, an astonishingly clumsy move, the British government really went and helped push neutrals into the rebel camp when, in what is certainly the poorest timing in history, Parliament passed the Quebec act in the summer of 1774, though this in Britain was regarded as a bit of colonial housekeeping. But in British colonies in North America, this was seen as an existential threat to their ambitions, their freedom. During the Seven Years War, sometimes called the French Indian War, a generation before, Britain had conquered all of French North America, the British had spent the intervening years just desperately trying to work out or organize this vast and unexpected new empire. Now, in this act, for administrative purposes really, they extended Canada all the way down through the Midwest, all the way to the Mississippi. And American settlement into that area was restricted, and in Quebec itself. So in this large area, formerly the French Empire, now the British, the rule of the French Catholic settlers was confirmed, was locked in. They could go on in the political and religious manner to which they were accustomed. The Americans just couldn't simply believe this. They'd fought for that country. They'd fought for the right to drive the French out and expand into this virgin terrain. As they saw it, they dreamed of settling ever further west. They were rabidly Protestant, by the way, and so this added a religious dimension to it. There was also a land shortage in the thirteen colonies. Settlers were hungry for more land. So now the Americans said to themselves, they'd fought and died for this dream of a Protestant English westward expansion. In the French Indian War, they'd fought under those British banners. And now that Britain had won the war, it had given all that land to the Catholic French anyway. So if you're a loyalist trying to claim that it's in the American colonies interest to remain part of the British Empire whilst also saying there's nothing tyrannical or arbitrary about the British government, well, things just got a lot harder after the Tea Party. All the way through 1774, things moved at breakneck speed right across the American colonies, really, but particularly in Massachusetts Bay. Here you see placid little towns across the colony gripped with the same spirit of defiance that had burned so bright in Boston. These provincials were convinced they were the heirs to the British tradition of self government. This was their ancient right as Britons. They would be governed only with their own consent, and everything else was tyranny. So when they began to organize and resist and disobey King George's royal government, they didn't see themselves as revolutionaries. It was the government in London that was experimenting with dangerous new ideas. They were the ones tipping into absolutism and tyranny. Massachusetts Bay was thoroughly gripped by the desire not to collaborate with King George's government in London. And they weren't alone. In September 1774, delegates from 12 colonies, not quite the 13 yet from those 12 colonies, met in Philadelphia and agreed to boycott all British goods until Parliament repealed the intolerable act. This meeting in Philadelphia also urged the Patriots, as they called them in various colonies, to establish unequivocally that they controlled the militia, not the king's government. Now, the militia was the colonial defence force. None of these colonies had professional militaries. They had militias made up of part time soldiers. It had been the law since right at the beginning of these colonies that any male settler should keep a weapon in good condition, handy, keep some powder and supplies, and be ready to turn out in the event of a threat, usually from the indigenous population, but also imperial adversaries like the French as well. Now, traditionally, these militias had been under the command of the governor and the assembly, but the militias were now told they would answer to a board of patriots in each colony. In Virginia, the militia, for example, elected one George Washington, a veteran of the French Indian War, to be its commander. Back in Boston, General Gage dissolved the Massachusetts Parliament. The assembly, and interestingly, the assemblyman said, fine. And they just simply moved to the town of Concord and they reformed. They became the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and they just went on ruling Massachusetts, if you like. They became a shadow government. They collected the tax, they took over the militia, and they prepared for military conflict. They stockpiled supplies and weapons. There was certainly no shortage of men who knew the business of war. 15,000 Massachusetts men had served in the French Indian War in the Seven Years War, fighting against the French, fighting against their indigenous allies. Now Loyalist officers were rooted out of the militia towns, voted new patriot officers in, usually men like Washington and Virginia with real combat experience. In Massachusetts, they set up special units. They were men who were particularly experienced in war, or they were young and fit, single and keen, and they were to be a rapid response force. In the event of trouble, they would drop the plough, they dropped their shears or smithy's hammer, and they would gallop to the sound of the guns. It was said that they would be ready at a minute's notice and they would become known as the Minutemen. As news of this arrived back in Britain, it was clear that it was a major crisis. They were faced now with the task of basically pacifying a society that was in full revolt thousands of miles away. And here is my hottest take for all the drama of the eventual victory of the Americans in this War of Independence. Actually, it was 1774, before any shots had been fired, that the British Empire in this part of the Americas was destroyed. In that year, peacefully but robustly, the Americans simply de facto dissolved their former arrangements with the British Crown. They did the most Revolutionary thing that any of us can do. It's the nuclear option. Once so seismic and yet so small and simple, they just called the bluff of government and courts and generations of accepted practice across the colonies. They just made their own governments. Is a royal governor a royal governor if everyone just ignores him and listens to someone else? Or is he just a guy with funny clothes? And in 1774, it became clear that the answer was yes. These colonies, and especially Massachusetts Bay, were effectively lost to the British in 1774. When the Americans simply said, no thanks, not anymore. The British, they tried to order them about and the Americans replied, yeah, you and what army? And the British said, this army, Britain had once had a very big army, in fact had 300,000 men under arms in the Seven Years War. But that had come very close to bankrupting Britain. And as a result, by now it had no more than 40,000 troops under arms. And most of those were required to keep the restless, unhappy people of Ireland obedient to their British masters. So there just weren't anything like the number of troops available to bring America back to its obedience then. The war that was coming is particularly interesting to historians of British politics because it's one of the few major wars in British imperial history when there was a terrible schism within the British ruling elite. Even at this early stage within Britain, there was dissension. For example, the legendary former Prime Minister, William Pitt, William Pitt the Elder, we now know him as he'd been one of the architects of victory in the mid century, one of the architects of the victory in the Seven Years War. And he rose in early 1775, he rose in the House of Lords and gave a remarkable speech in which he said, all attempts to impose servitude on such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation must be in vain. Well, his warnings, though, they were ignored by the government and enough people in Parliament who seemed to be gripped by a kind of madness, many of them seemed to want war. The Americans would never stand up to a British army. Declared one member. Well, if he was wrong, Britain had a massive problem because as I said, Britain just didn't have the troops to fight a large scale, determined, effective enemy in the Americas. Now there is another option for the British. You can see it in the wish casting here by the Secretary at War who announced, a conquest by land is unnecessary. This is in 1775, he said this when the country can first be reduced to distress and then to obedience by our marine. Throughout British history, we've usually had One strategy, and that's been to rely on the Navy. But you know, that thing about strategy is that everyone's got one till they get punched in the mouth. And the navy strategy isn't going to work, really, with these American colonies, because the navy cannot occupy great swathes of the American hinterland. They cannot bring the people of Albany to obedience. They could blockade the coast, although it's a very, very long coast indeed, with all sorts of inlets and bays and safe havens for smugglers to come and go. Smugglers, who'd been doing that for generations, knew exactly how to avoid the exciseman or the Royal Navy. But even if they did manage to blockade the coast, that strategy would take years. And meanwhile, the colonists were flouting their disobedience to the Crown. There only one way to solve that, to solve the problems of these shadow governments just operating in places like Massachusetts Bay, was to put boots on the ground. You need redcoats to go and break up those meetings and, well, restore British rule. And that's pretty much what the British decided to do, albeit with utterly inadequate resources. King George 3rd told both houses of parliament early 1775 that, referring to Massachusetts Bay, a rebellion at this time actually exists within the said province. And he wasn't wrong about that. The colonials had built their own government. They were stockpiling weapons. Gage, sitting there in Boston, could only look on in horror. These Massachusetts Bay provincials, they stripped coastal forts of their cannon and their gunpowder. They trained volunteers just right out in the open. By early 1775, Gage reported that there were 30,000 men under arms in New England. And even worse, they were developing their own artillery train that wouldn't have looked out of place on European battlefields. Now he had nothing like the number of troops he needed to deal with that. He had 7,000 troops across all of the American colonies with those 4,000 troops in Boston. Now, bear in mind, bear in mind, friends, the peacetime Prussian army at that time numbered nearly 200,000 men, and Prussia occupied a much smaller area than the rebellious colonies. The numbers just didn't stack up. But these were all just details to the bigwigs in London, Gage was told in no uncertain terms, get out of Boston and do something. Gage had been trying a bit. He'd been hitherto sort of sending very small surgical strikes out to seize military stores. He'd sent out troops, for example, to roll up mystic river and grab hold of the gunpowder in modern day Somerville. He'd launch another raid on Salem. But overall, Gage was deeply pessimistic about his ability to put down this rebellion in any conventional sense, he wrote an astonishing letter to London. He said, if you think 10,000 men sufficient, send 20. If 1 million is thought enough, give 2. You save both blood and treasure. In the end, London must have thought their man on the spot had lost his mind. But they did decide to send a few hundred marines. But, of course, Gage was completely right. Bringing the American colonies back to obedience would require a monumental military effort. Boots on the ground, garrisons in every significant town, the embers of revolution stamped out everywhere, all at once. It was, frankly, far beyond the means of the early modern British state. Gage knew it at this point, Pitt knew it at this point. And yet it would take years of bloody, disastrous, expensive war to drive that message into the brains of the key decision makers. On 14 April 1775, General Gage, sitting in Boston, received news from across the Atlantic, from Britain, that King George considered Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion. And with that, he received orders to.

[General Gage]

Get on with it.

[Dan Snow]

Gage had to do something. He had to make a move. Now, he knew from informants that the provincials, which is what I'm going to be calling the revolutionaries or the rebels or the patriots or the American colonials who didn't want British rule, is what I'm going to be calling them from this point forward. Pinchals. He knew that they'd gathered military supplies at Concord, a town 20 miles from Boston. Perhaps, Gage thought, a quick, firm confiscation of these warlike supplies, well, perhaps that would nip the whole thing in the bud. Perhaps that might end the rebellion at one single bloodless stroke. Well, might as well give it a go. He would send his best men because it was only 20 miles away. They could be there and back in one day, and he thought the militia wouldn't have time to react. They'd just. The men would march quick there and back, and that would be the end of it. His troops would march with fife and drum playing. They would march not as sort of foreign conquerors, but as the king's troops, maintaining order in one of the king's provinces. He knew that the men chosen must be pretty fit. So he ordered all of the battalion commanders in Boston to give him all of their light infantry companies. Now a battalion of men, something like 500 or so people, could be more, could be less, was divided up into companies. When they stood in line of battle, there were two flank companies. They were kind of elite companies. One was called Grenadiers. They're big, strong, tough, Veterans. And the other flank company was the light company, so young, agile, super fit and keen soldiers. And so he decided that this expedition would be purely made up of the grenadier companies and the light companies from all of his battalions in Boston. That meant that only the finest physical specimens, the toughest, the fittest troops would march. He would weld them into one grenadier battalion and one light infantry battalion, and he put them all under the command of a guy called Colonel Francis Smith. He, in turn, was given another officer he'd never served alongside, a Royal Marine, Major John Pitcairn. He was the second in command. And so it was a brigade of men from entirely different units thrown together under unknown officers. On the afternoon of 18 April, Smith received his orders from Gage. He was to leave Boston with, I'm quoting, the utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all artillery, ammunition, provisions, tents, small arms and all military stores, whatever. And that basically means steal everything, chuck the gunpowder in the river, spike the cannon, destroy the gun carriages. One way of disabling a cannon was to knock the trunnions off. It's a word I like, so you'll forgive the digression. A trunnion is the bit that sticks out the side of a cannon, that connects it to the carriage and it acts as a fulcrum. And if you bash those off, the cannon's unusable anyway. Smith was told he should proceed with the utmost expedition and secrecy, but you will take care that the soldiers not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property. Gage didn't specify what to do if they met any opposition. Now, the problem for Gage and Smith is the plan was blown before Smith had even had time to round up the units involved. One of Gage's assistants, an officer, Lord Percy, he was wandering about on Boston Common and people just came up to him and said, we know you're off to Concord and you've got no chance of getting the guns there. He raced back to Gage and told him it was already the talk of the town and Gage was absolutely furious. You cannot prosecute a campaign if your headquarters is that leaky. And it is possible, it has been argued by historians. That's controversial. That the leaks were coming from inside Gage's own house, possibly from inside his bed. His wife, Margaret Kemble Gage was an old New Jersey family, and the gossip at the time suggested that her sympathies lay with her fellow Americans. So incredibly awkward situation. But whoever it was, it was the worst kept secret in Boston and the Leaders of the provincial government, provincial militia in Concord. Well, they would learn about it very, very soon indeed, albeit via a slightly complicated process. More on that in a second. So the British soldiers did leave Boston that night on their secret mission that was already not a secret and you can imagine the grumbling and the cursing as the various platoons of all the different battalions were told they were going to be busy that night. On went the kit. Well, not full backpacks, but definitely their haversacks. So little smaller sacks if you like. There was enough food in those for a one day expedition. Everyone was issued with 36 pre prepared rounds of ammunition. So that's a bit of paper, like a paper container.

[General Gage]

It's wrapped up, it's got black gunpowder.

[Dan Snow]

In there, it's got a lead ball, it's got a musket ball in there as well. So I'm simplifying here. But that whole thing was based then pushed down the barrel of a musket, the projectile and the propellant wrapped up. A bit like an old school Christmas cracker. The Navy then took them in small boats through the black waters of Boston Harbour. Such a different geography to what it is bay. Much of the water they rode across is now reclaimed. It's now heavily urbanised landscape. But the bit where the Charles river enters the harbour still gives you a little sense of what it was like. Just as with every amphibious operation in history, there's always a shortage of boats, a shortage of able seamen to man them, and soldiers blithely assume that crossing the water is like moving a piece across a chessboard.

[British Soldier]

Get very frustrated.

[Dan Snow]

The redcoats were rammed in. They stood together, packed, while sailors hauled on muffled oars. They were dropped off on a stretch of coast just outside Charleston to try and maintain secrecy. And then the boats rowed back to get the second wave. It was a really ponderous process and as I said in the introduction, it was particularly ponderous because the redcoats had to splash ashore through marsh and shallow water, mud, still patches of snow on the ground. Actually they were having a very tough time. They'd been awake all day. They'd now been suddenly told to head off on this secret mission. They were having a tough time. They were wet and they were cold and they were tired and that was the beginning. That was the start. It was only going to get worse. You're listening to Dan Snows history. We're talking about the battle of Lexington and Concord. More coming up.

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[Josie Santee]

I'm Josie Santee, health coach, wellness editor and host of the Every Girl Podcast where we cut through the noise with realistic, expert backed advice to help you thrive in every category of life while still loving the person that you already are. And part of loving yourself is being really authentic to you, including the clothes you wear. In partnership with Nordstrom, we are helping you update your spring wardrobe so your style is fit for your best self. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands like Skims, Mango, Free People and Princess polly, all under $100. From trending Sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles that you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make it easier than ever. Shop now in stores [e-mail] if you.

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Tells a Story Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on Our skin. Listen to our skin on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Snow]

It was probably about 1:30 in the morning by the Time they set off and it became immediately obvious that the whole countryside was up like a swarm of bees. HOOVES CLATTERED in the night, warning shots.

[British Soldier]

Were fired, bells were being rung.

[Dan Snow]

The minute men were mobilizing. There was no surprise here. They were marching straight into the heart of bandit country. And they were expected because before they'd even left Boston, word was flying across Massachusetts. There was a pre prepared network that just needed the order to move. Riders were on standby to get out of town. One rider made it overland through the narrow strip of land called the Boston Neck that connected to the mainland. Another rider would cross the Charles river and then get on a horse from Charleston. Meanwhile, lanterns were lifted to the steeple of the Old North Church in central Boston. This was a message to pre positioned riders about the particular route the British were taking. And so these men, as soon as they saw the signal, they galloped out of Charleston. William Dawes was a Boston tanner. He's the one who managed to slip out of town via the neck at 9pm, and he made for Lexington to warn senior provincial figures that they might face arrest the following day. He told them to make their escape. Meanwhile, a prosperous silversmith called Paul Revere also rode across Boston Harbour and he got a horse in Charleston and galloped out of town. He was chased by British scouts, but used his knowledge of the terrain to outstrip them. And he took a roundabout route to Lexington. And all the way he galloped along, warning people on the route that the redcoats were coming. Key militia commanders were alerted, who in turn called out their minutemen. When Revere arrived at Lexington, he found the two senior patriot leaders there. He found John Hancock and Sam Adams. He warned them and told them to get going. And there's a famous moment in Lexington as well when he's going around telling everyone that the redcoats are coming. And some people shouted at an upstairs window, be quiet, we're trying to get some sleep up here. And he responded, noise. You'll have noise soon enough. The Regulars are coming out now. After shouting at a few sleepy townsfolk, Revere, Adams and Hancock, they decided the best course of action, very sensibly, was to go to the pub to discuss their next move. Around about the same time the Redcoats were beginning their journey towards Lexington, Revere left Lexington. That's how early he'd got there. And he went with Dawes, who he'd met up with, and another man, Dr. Prescott. He'd been riding through the night, having visited his girlfriend, but he was keen to get involved in the action. The three of them were then intercepted by British scouts. Dawes was thrown from his saddle. Prescott jumped a fence and escaped, and he was the one who would take the news onto Concord. But Revere was captured, and he told his captors that wasn't entirely true. He told his captors that the militia was out, ready for action, and his British captors at that seemed to have panicked. They freed Revere and they galloped back to Boston. The actions of Paul Revere's captors, I think they do show that the British were nervous, and certainly Smith was nervous, too. Back with the main force that's marching now inland, he decided to split his forces. He knew that word was out, and he decided to send his second in command, Pitcairn, ahead with light infantry to make a dash straight through to Lexington. In the grey light of the very early dawn, Pitcairn and his men approached the town. As they did so, they saw a large group of armed colonials, provincial troops, watching them from the high ground. This was ominous. They were all supposed to be in their beds. Pitcairn had not been instructed what to do in the event of opposition, but he wasn't taking any chances. So he ordered his men to load their muskets, but he beseeched them they had to hold their fire until they had a specific order. Pitcairn did not want to start a war by accident. Slightly behind Pitcairn, with the rest of the troops, the grenadiers, Smith was also feeling the tension, and he sent messages back to Boston, back to General Gage, saying he didn't like the look of what he was seeing and hearing, and he was pretty sure he would need reinforcing before the day was out. Only a few hours had passed since they started marching, and Smith had just asked Gage to send help. Now, for this episode of the podcast, I was lucky enough to go to Massachusetts. I visited Lexington, Concord, Boston. I walked the route taken by the soldiers that night. And I did so because here at History Hit, we are making a couple of documentaries about 1775, the Big 250th, Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and the siege of Boston. So please make sure you subscribe to History Hit and you can access our TV channel with our hundreds of documentaries. But for the purpose of this podcast, what you'll hear for the rest of this episode is a mixture of me on location in Lexington and Concord and then back in the studio as well. So as dawn breaks on that April morning 250 years ago, let me take you to Lexington itself.

[General Gage]

I'm just walking onto the green in the town of Lexington. It was called the Common back then.

[Dan Snow]

The sun is just coming off.

[General Gage]

I've got up bright and early. It's unbelievably cold, but it's worth it because it's a magical place. The sun is just now tickling the white facades, the beautiful houses that line the square, with their handsome porches, shuttered windows and sloping roofs. American flags mounted above many of the doors. One there is the American flag of 1775, so the flag that predates the Declaration of Independence, so very appropriate for this period. And off the right there, it's the Buckman Tavern, a very handsome building, sadly no longer a tavern. But that is where the militia here in Lexington had spent the night talking, planning, drinking, listening to rumours and gossip and stories about where the British were and when they might be coming. But those militiamen were about to find out for real. Because as the sun came up on 19 April, the Redcoats marched into town. Now, the Redcoats have been listening to rumours of their own. They had heard, in fact, from Paul Revere. He'd been. When he'd been apprehended by those British officers and let go, he told them that there were a thousand militiamen waiting in Lexington. Pitcairn had heard this news and was obviously a bit nervous, so he paused outside the town and he told his men to load their muskets. Load it with balls. So the British units were marching in here, apprehensive, expecting trouble. As they arrived on this triangular green where I'm standing now, they spotted the military drawn up in formation. Not a thousand men, but around 70. And critically, they weren't blocking the road to Concord. They were standing beside it, observing it. Now, this is one of those fascinating moments in history. You see it quite often.

[Dan Snow]

You find that there's.

[General Gage]

There's a lunar pull towards violence when you bring two large bodies of armed young men into close proximity. There's something elemental about it. These men are scared. They're pumped up. Some might feel genuine hate. Others are desperate to conquer their terror and project strength. Their mates, the militiamen, are serving alongside their friends, their family, their sons, their kid brother. Some of the men out there, maybe they desire that action, the immediacy of battle to break the tension of the war. Waiting that day, you can be certain. There were white knuckles gripping musket stocks. There were officers hands worrying the brass hilts or the. The wire grip of their swords. On occasions like this, there's an impulsion to action. The men of the Lexington militia, they watched as the Red Coats deployed from the column in which they'd been marching into line. Now, this was battle array. In a column, you can't bring all your muskets to bear. You're all marching one behind the other, but in a line to perhaps three ranks deep, that every single one of them can fire when ordered, a crashing volley, the likes of which I've talked about on this podcast several times before, the likes of which decimated the brave Highlanders on the sleet lashed Field of Culloden a couple of generations before or. Or drove the French fleeing from the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec. These volleys were famously lethal, and the militia would have watched that column deploying into line like a snake uncoiling. The militia's commander was a man called Parker. He told his men, stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war, let it begin here. For various reasons, there's great confusion at this point. Pitcairn appears to have been slightly separated from his lead unit. There were officers charging around on horses, giving contradictory orders. Pitcairn rushes over and attempts to deconflict this situation. I think he. He roars at the rebels to lay down their arms. Other officers shout, disperse, ye rebels. There's confusion, there's noise, there's. There's tension. It seems that Parker reluctantly at this point, does order his men to disperse, to pull back. And Pitcairn then roars at his men to disarm the rebels, but not fire. Amid this confused, heightened situation, well, something utterly predictable happened. A shot rang out, and no one knows who, and no one knows why. And obviously afterwards, both sides blamed each other. But that shot provoked an immediate reaction. The regulars responded as men who have felt themselves to be in the sights of an enemy for hours, for months, they set about the militia. They fired a volley. They killed several of them. Most of those were shot in the back as they'd been moving away. Regulars seem to have lost their vaunted discipline at that point. The machine became now a mass of brawlers. They closed with the provincials. They used their bayonets. The officers desperately tried to regain control. At this point, it seems that Smith suddenly arrived, and he had his drummer repeatedly say, sound the signal to reform their ranks. The beat to arms. Remember, at this period, most of instructions took a musical form. Men knew when to get up and pack up the camp and eat and march and stop and quit drinking for the evening, all via drum and fife. And finally that drum recalled the men to their discipline. They formed up, but in front of them lay the bodies of dead colonial subjects of King George. Dead provincial militiaman. I walked across the common. Now I'm standing in front of one particularly beautiful house, painted white. It was here that Jonathan Harrington lived.

[Dan Snow]

And he'd been among the men in.

[General Gage]

The militia that day on the common. He'd been wounded by the redcoats. He crawled back to his home a few dozen meters, crawled up the steps and died right there at the feet of his terrified wife. After months, months and months of tension, the situation had been suddenly transformed. The British formed up. Smith, I think, rather oddly, allowed the infantrymen to give three cheers and fire a celebratory volley as if they just vanquished an enemy. It looked bad, and it was also an unwise use of powder.

[Dan Snow]

They would need it as the day went on. I've often wondered about that celebratory volley. It's odd that the British seemed to be feeling so cheerful. They just shot and killed some of their fellow countrymen. But perhaps they felt they'd finally confronted these wretched, rebellious farmers, and they had scattered them as they'd hoped, with one ragged volley. Perhaps this whole thing would be as easy as they had bragged themselves in the taverns of Boston. On they marched. They were blissfully unaware of the news and the gossip and the misinformation that was now galloping across the colony far quicker than their measured step. They were headed for Concord. There the militia had been spending their time dispersing and hiding the warlike supplies. But as they did so, other minutemen from the surroundings, from right across New England, in fact, had been flooding towards the town. And as they gathered, the talk was all about the advance of the redcoats and the violence at Lexington. Blood had been spilt. Let's head now to a very important bridge just north of the town of Concord.

[General Gage]

I'm standing now in a field just north of Concord.

[Dan Snow]

It's a beautiful river valley. There's an alluvial plain.

[General Gage]

It's flooded at the moment in spring.

[Dan Snow]

Here in New England.

[General Gage]

It's got a river snaking through the middle of this landscape.

[British Soldier]

Beautiful river.

[General Gage]

And across that river, there's a wooden bridge.

[British Soldier]

It's always described as a rude bridge in the. The songs, the tales, the stories were.

[Dan Snow]

Written about what happened here that fateful day.

[General Gage]

This is one of the routes in and out of Concord. This bridge was seized by some light infantry. Three companies of light infantry were sent here, Redcoats, to secure the bridge while their colleagues, grenadiers, they searched the town for, found warlike supplies and destroyed them. But it was out here as well that the provincials had gathered. The militia of Concord had not contested the town. They hadn't tried to stop the redcoats getting in. They'd retreated just here, north. The town. They're on a.

[Dan Snow]

The hill.

[General Gage]

I'm standing on the side of it now. And they, they were slowly trying to get a sense of what was going on. They were on this hill, waiting, building their strength, deciding what to do. They'd watched the redcoats. They entered Concord. One of them had left an account, so he said, the sun was arising and shined on their arms, and they made a noble appearance in their red coats and glistening arms. The redcoats had marched into town three abreast, their pace set by fife and drums. It was almost like they were on the parade ground. They'd entered town at about 7 o'clock in the morning. Most of them had fanned out looking for military equipment in town, and in fact, they found a chest containing the provincial congress's entire treasury, all the money of the provincial congress. But locals have persuaded the men that it was private property, and the redcoats remarkably believed them and not confiscated it. But in this field where I am.

[Dan Snow]

Now, a very interesting dynamic was taking place.

[General Gage]

The redcoats, the hundred or so redcoats manning that bridge, they watched as the group of militiamen, minutemen on this hill just swelled, just grew bigger and bigger. More and more men joined their ranks.

[Dan Snow]

And those men on the hill, they.

[General Gage]

Prepared themselves for battle.

[Dan Snow]

They didn't know what was to come.

[General Gage]

They, they did their pre battle little checks. They, they got new flints out from pouches. The flint was very important, a flintlock musket. You, you have a little hammer mechanism with a nicely knapped, sharp flint in it that slams down and causes a spark. That spark ignites a small charge of gunpowder, which in turn sends a spurt of flame through a little hole into the barrel of the gun itself, where it ignites the main charge and sends that musket ball flying out. Their guns are loaded. Those rounds rock rammed home snug. And there's new flints in those hammers so there'll be no misfires. The militia commander on this hill, he seemed to grow in some ways more confident as his force expanded. But he also had the strong sense that was a desire within his ranks to do something, to take some action. No one knew what was happening in Concord, but they Were fired up by stories, gossip, rumors of atrocities carried out in Lexington. They imagined what the redcoats could be doing in their community, in their town with their friends, their loved ones, their wives, their children, their property. The redcoats might be going a rampage. And that's when they saw smoke rising above the town. In fact, we now know that the redcoats been burning some tents and warlike.

[Dan Snow]

Supplies they'd found, and some of the.

[General Gage]

Sparks had spread to a roof of a house. And the redcoats immediately helped the locals put out this fire. But it sends smoke into the air. And that was the moment that the militia here decided to act. Was a hostile force torching their town, their property, their livelihood. It was too much. A young, thrusting lieutenant, ambitious, aggressive, he went up to the commander and he said pointedly, will you let them burn the town? The commander decided he would not let them. He decided to act. Checking that muskets were loaded, he sounded the advance. The militia stepped off.

[Dan Snow]

But he ordered every single one of.

[General Gage]

Them, do not fire first. Do not pull that trigger unless we are fired upon. And so they marched down the hill where I am now. They marched towards concord and towards war. Now, the British troops on that bridge grew very nervous. They were heavily outnumbered, and they decided to pull back to the opposite bank of the river. A lieutenant reported that the provincial troops, well, they looked regular and determined. This was not the rabble of farmers that they'd been expecting. They sent back for reinforcements. They slowly retreated across the bridge, and on came the provincials in a very warlike manner. It was around 10 in the morning. Now, they got to within 50 meters of the brits, Some Brits still clinging onto the bridge, the rest arrayed along the far bank. And at that great moment of tension, after hours of staring each other down, in fact, after weeks and months of ambiguity, of uncertainty, of tension, that's when the British troops opened fire.

[Dan Snow]

The British shot first.

[General Gage]

It was unclear whether scared young men took matters in their own hand or whether it was at the order of an officer. But British muskets spat their smoke and sent lead balls flying towards the enemy. Captain Davis of the provincial was the first to fall. Just this morning, he told his wife as he left home, he'd simply said, take good care of the children. Now he was lying dead on the banks of the river here, just north of concord. The continental commander, major John buttrick, his family had been farming this field since 1638, and upon receiving that ragged British volley, he roared at his men, fire. Fellow soldiers, for God's sakes.

[British Soldier]

Fire.

[General Gage]

The King's regular troops, the British army and the King's American subjects were now.

[Dan Snow]

Deliberately firing at each other.

[General Gage]

In this field in Massachusetts Bay. This was the shot heard around the world. This was the shot that signaled the start of a war in the Americas, a war of liberation, but also a civil war, a terrible conflict that would forged the USA itself.

[Dan Snow]

It was a war that would eventually.

[General Gage]

Spread from this field across the world's oceans to Europe, Africa and Asia. And what's fascinating in this first clash, tellingly, the provincials, the rebels, they fared better. The redcoats were shooting too high. It's an old problem, if with inexperienced troops, that the kick from the muskets forces the muzzles up and those bullets just go a little bit too high. By contrast, the provincial troops poured accurate fire into the redcoats. And then something extraordinary happened. The British units broke.

[Dan Snow]

They fled.

[General Gage]

Their officers had been felled, leaderless, panicked, they ran back into town. An uneasy peace had now been transformed.

[Dan Snow]

Into a shooting war. The British fled until they found their discipline under the furious glare of Smith, who was marching towards the bridge. He'd brought up reinforcements and the men fell back into their ranks. Smith was not happy, but he also realized the situation was getting completely out of control. He ordered the search of Concord stopped. He wanted his brigade back together and he was particularly worried because he could see from the high ground more and more provincial units flooding towards the sound of the shooting. The jaws were closing around Smith and he decided he had no option but to retreat back to Boston. The Brits would go.

[British Soldier]

Carts were found for the wounded officers.

[Dan Snow]

The wounded men could walk if they could. If they couldn't, they'd be left behind. Now, if you ask any soldier, they all tell you that one thing they try to avoid doing at all costs is to conduct a fighting withdrawal, to retreat in the face of the enemy, to retreat whilst still fighting with the enemy. Because you have to judge when to stand and fight, to exchange blows, and then when to make a rapid withdrawal. It's bad for morale. And if morale plunges just when you need the men at their most alert to carry out this most difficult of tasks, then you risk getting into a death spiral. To make matters worse, for this particular unit, they knew that the enemy dominated all the territory through which they're having to retreat. We don't know how much of this was going through the mind of Smith as he gathered his force together and ordered them home to Boston. Blood had been spilt. There were now rumours of atrocities flying through the ranks on both sides. I think there was a general feeling now that if there was a fight to be had, let it be had here. And every provincial militiaman for miles around, something like 14,000 men, they were gathering and most of them realised exactly the.

[British Soldier]

Route the British would have to take.

[Dan Snow]

On their way back to Boston.

[General Gage]

It was around midday. The 700 redcoats, already exhausted, now faced a march of 20 miles. And it was abundantly clear that the march would take place in a very different atmosphere to the one of the morning. Smith abandoned the parade ground like formation of the morning and instead moved through this landscape as if it was a hostile war zone. Grenadier companies stuck to the road, but out on either flank were the light companies like infantrymen. And their job was now to push back any provincial troops from the verge of the road, keep them out of musket range, check any buildings for hostile snipers, push through the woods on either side using muskets and bayonets to drive off any provincial troops that might threaten the column.

[I]

I am now walking along that road named today Battle Road. And I'm in the footsteps those redcoats. That British column that snaked through this landscape, it was anything from 300 meters to half a mile in length. The road here is flanked by the famous New England dry stone walls. It was an agricultural landscape, so crisscrossed with hedges and walls. But it's also a rolling landscape. There's plenty of COVID here, big boulders, trees. Frankly, it's pretty ideal place for an ambush. And that's what the British were now marching into.

[Dan Snow]

You're listening to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about the battle of Lexington and Concord. More coming up.

[Verizon Representative]

Now. At Verizon we have some big news for your peace of mind. For all our customers, existing and new, we're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on MyPlan and MyHome. That's future you peace of mind and everyone can save on a brand new phone on MyPlan. When you trade in any phone from one of our top brands, that's new phone peace of mind because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us, we got you visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

[Josie Santee]

I'm Josie Santee, health coach, wellness editor and host of the Every Girl podcast where we cut through the noise with realistic expert backed advice to help you thrive in every category of life while still loving the person that you already are. And part of loving yourself is being really authentic to you, including the clothes you wear. In partnership with Nordstrom, we're helping you update your spring wardrobe so your style is fit for your best self. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands like Skims, Mango Free People and Princess polly, all under $100. From trending Sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles that you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make it easier than ever. Shop now in stores [e-mail].

[Dan Snow]

It went all right, I suppose you could say, until they reached a spot called Merriam's Corner. There they found 500 militiamen waiting for them again. We don't really know who fired first, but any hope that Concord might have been a freak occurrence, well, that was extinguished here. Things quickly descended into a blazing battle. The provincials, the colonials, fired from barn buildings and from behind low walls. The redcoats were stuck on the road. They were marching through a blizzard of fire. Some units would occasionally halt. They'd send a volley of musket balls rattling into the side of a barn. The light infantry were then sent off the roads. They did very valuable work at this point. They would advance. Not on the road itself. The verges try and keep the colonials back from the main column. They tried to ensure that the provincial fire would be less lethal. So now the light infantry have got to move parallel to the column on the road, about 80 metres or so from the road, chiving out the colonials from farm buildings, from behind walls, from outhouses with bayonet and musket butt. At 1300 hours, a little bit further down the road, the column marched straight into a thousand more well placed provincial troops. At a sharp turn in the road that would come to be known as Bloody Angle, the redcoats found themselves in a bloody crossfire. They staggered through a desperate rear guard, formed up and lashed the provincials with those musket volleys that the British were so famous for. Just beyond there was the militia from the town of Woburn. It was a running battle. Smith no longer attempted to gather up his wounded. Like a shark trying to keep oxygen over its gills. The British had to keep moving through ambush after ambush. The flanking light infantry were knackered. They'd been sort of jogging to and fro alongside the column. They'd been climbing fenders and jumping streams and fighting, and most of them were now lagging behind. The column was blundering blindly on and they were about to Face another body of men. And these men were bent on revenge.

[General Gage]

I'm walking the route now from Concord to Lexington. I've just arrived at the boundary of Lexington itself, just outside the town. And like those flanking units, like those light infantrymen, I've left the road and I've pushed into the woods that line this road, as they have done to keep those provincial troops back, to try and secure the road and prevent ambush. The reason I've come to this particular part of the battle battlefield is there's been some very recent archaeology here that's really cast the battle in a new light, because this is where the Lexington militia were waiting for the British troops, and they were hankering for revenge. Don't forget. It all began with the Lexington militia. At sunrise that morning, they'd been fired upon on the Lexington common. They'd lost several of their comrades, killed and. And more wounded. And now they were not waiting placidly out in the open for the British. They were in this wooded landscape, actually very well placed. I'm in the woods. You can hear the leaves thick on the ground. And this area was wooded back in 1775. And there's a ridge in front of me that runs horizontally to the road, and there's big, big boulders on that ridge as well. So it's an ideal landscape. Plenty of COVID plenty of protection from British bullets. And this is where the Lexington militia were drawn up. From analysis of musket balls done by metal detectorists on this particular stretch of ground, we think that the British would have sent out a unit, a flanking unit, to enter this woodland and try and sweep the militia away. So the rest of the column were free to pass up the road. But as they were deploying, and this is exactly where I'm standing now, the Lexington militia fired a crashing volley at about, I say, about 50 meters range. The piece of ground that I'm on now was thickly littered with musket balls. From that one volley, then the British appeared, have fired back, but those musket balls are quite widely spread, so it seems like the militia would have been spread out there behind trees and rocks, or they'd have been retreating over the crest of the hill and the British would have been firing at individuals. The provincials were unable to work their way back through the woods and live to fight another day. They were able to attack the British column again in just a few hundred meters, keeping up that pressure, perpetuating that misery for the British troops, who are effectively surrounded on all sides. The Lexington militia ahead of them to the sides of them, and the provincials from Bloody Angle following them up like hyenas, ready to pounce on the wounded or exhausted stragglers. One British lieutenant wrote an account. He said the country was an amazing strong one, full of hills, wood, stone walls and the like, which the rebels did not fail to take advantage of. For they were all lined with people who kept an incessant fire upon us, as we did too, upon them, but not with the same advantage. And it's so exciting now, really, being in that landscape as it's described in that account. Just here, as they pushed into the town of Lexington, Smith was hit in the thigh. He was forced to take his place on one of the wagons of wounded officers. Pitcairn took control, but very soon he was unhorsed, as you might expect. He's riding a horse up and down the column, trying to be a commanding presence, trying to calm and reassure his men. But that was just a target that invited a tornado of fire. So Smith's been taken out of the battle, Pitcairn's been knocked off his horse. Things are unraveling.

[Dan Snow]

The column was on the verge of annihilation. Officers start to threaten their own men. One ensign, a junior officer called De Bernier, he recounted later that faced with men that were sort of breaking ranks and beginning to run away, just charge off, the officers, and I'm quoting, got to the front and presented their bayonets and told the men, if they advance, they should die. Upon this, they began to form under very heavy fire. So it's becoming very, very difficult to maintain the cohesion of this battered unit.

[I]

It's hard not to put yourself in the position of those Redcoats as, as you trudge along Battle Road. They've been awake the whole, the previous day well over 24 hours. By now they were already into their second marathon. In terms of distance traveled, their feet would have been killing them. Their water canteens were long ago have run dry. They were hungry.

[Dan Snow]

It was very hot.

[I]

And on top of all of that, they're in a seemingly never ending ambush. A moving circle of fire like some torment dreamt up by the devil himself. Around every bend, seemingly more and more units of the militia, thousands upon thousands of them, pouring their fire into this British column. The men out on the flanks, the light infantry, doing heroic work, trying to keep those provincial troops away from the road, trying to push them back beyond the range of their musketry. So to try and buy some breathing room for the men who trudged along the road. But that meant the light infantry were scaling these walls, they were leaping over the felled trees. They were even going house to house on occasion. In fact, I'm just passing a beautiful house that was a tavern at the time. And they'd have had to sweep through this tavern, the barn, the pig house, the outhouse, making sure there were no provincials lurking in there, ready to snipe out a window or have a potshot. As the troops, as they passed by, the council agreed, they could all just see these provincial militiamen moving along the verges, looking for spots to ambush, to turn and have a sharp pot shot at the British on the road. They could see more militia units arriving on these little minor roads from other parts of Massachusetts. There seems to be no end to their punishment that day. And I think as this march went on, they started to doubt their officers. They were now traumatized, not just by the danger they faced, but by seeing their friends, their comrades shot down, wounded beside them, having to abandon them on the side of the road, no time to scoop them up, no way of getting them back to Boston. Just leaving the dead, the dying and the wounded lying in ditches and on the verges, officers too, being killed and wounded, weakening the leadership, weakening the unit cohesion. I'm not surprised that tired, scared men start to think, well, perhaps the only way of surviving this route, this suicide march, is actually to just abandon the ranks, to strike out by yourself across country, hope that maybe you can make a straight dash through to Boston. But those were the desperate hallucinations of men at the very limit of their endurance. If the column fractured, if it lost its unity, then the survivors would surely be hunted down.

[Dan Snow]

The British did start to break men with blackened powder stained faces. Well, they looked around and despite the threats their officers, they opted for personal survival. Some did break ranks, some tried to run, tried to make their own way back. And the threat of the savage discipline of the Georgian army melted in the minds of the sleep deprived, exhausted, traumatized young men who were now running very low on ammunition. They made the split second judgment better the cat and nine tails, better a flogging later than a minute man's bayonet in the guts now. But then, at this moment of extreme peril of great crisis, the British expedition on the brink of total destruction, a ragged cheer went up, because there in Lexington, as they moved through, there was a very welcome sight. 1000 smart looking redcoats. Reinforcements had arrived, drawn up, a couple of field guns and cannon in front of them, firing six pound projectiles at the rebels. Their standards Snapping in the breeze. Brigadier Lord Hugh Percy, who I mentioned earlier, he'd been sent out by Gage with these thousand troops to rescue Smith's force. And that's exactly what happened.

[General Gage]

The survivors of that original expedition of.

[Dan Snow]

Smith's force collapsed behind Percy's men, gulping down water, swallowing the biscuit offered to them. Lord Percy later simply said, I had the happiness of saving them from inevitable destruction. But there was still a very long.

[British Soldier]

Road between them and Boston.

[Dan Snow]

At 15:30 or so, 3:30 or so, they set off.

[British Soldier]

And it was not over, not by a long shot. This new, enlarged British column simply faced the same threat. I went to Arlington in Massachusetts, which.

[Dan Snow]

Used to be known as Monotomy. They reached the town of Monotomy and the fighting reached a new pitch of intensity. And there's evidence for that in a very special building that I'm in now. This is the Jason Russell house.

[General Gage]

It stood here in 1775. It's now the home of the Arlington Historical Society. A couple lived here, Jason Russell and his wife with their children. In 75, he was a farmer. There would have been an orchard around here. The road to Boston was just out the front, still is there, about 20 yards away.

[Dan Snow]

And this house is a handsome house. It's large, a big structure, clapboard in.

[General Gage]

Its cladding, that classic New England clapboard. So long, horizontal planks running along the outside.

[Dan Snow]

By a remarkable twist of fate, and.

[General Gage]

That the careful stewardship of the same family that lived here for a century after the battle. It's beautifully preserved. Not just the layout and the structure of the house, but also the bit that I'm interested in today, the bullet holes. This house is peppered with bullet holes.

[Dan Snow]

They were plastered over, but the wooden.

[General Gage]

Walls that they penetrated and gouged were left in place. And it's thought the family realized, because of the importance of that day, they were custodians of that history, and they wanted to protect these bullet holes, these scars, as a memorial to what occurred that bloody day. So as you move through this wooden.

[Dan Snow]

House, you see that it is absolutely.

[General Gage]

Riddled with bullet holes, with musket ball holes.

[Dan Snow]

So we've got a parlor, and you.

[General Gage]

Can see an impact strike in the far wall. So it must have come through the outer wall of the building, possibly through the window. And it's then it's penetrated an internal wall. It's gone straight through that, and then.

[Dan Snow]

It'S gouged a piece out of the corner post, the newel posts, which are the. The uprights that hold up the stairs, and that is still there today. It's like someone's taking a bite out of it. That's in the very heart of this house. And now if you come through here, you can also also see in this.

[General Gage]

Room where there's a bed. In this room, there's a bullet hole.

[Dan Snow]

In the outer wall that's been filled.

[General Gage]

In, but it's blasted away. It's like a big exit wound. It's blasted away splinters of wood as it enters the room, which is very typical. And then that bullet is continued up.

[Dan Snow]

Here and smashed through again. Another internal wall. These lead musket balls were quite soft, so they get misshapen as they pass through something. So now that's quite an oval shape.

[General Gage]

That it's left there.

[Dan Snow]

And then I come through that next internal wall and the bullet has hit the ceiling here, gouged out a piece.

[General Gage]

Of the roof and would have dropped.

[Dan Snow]

The floor after that.

[General Gage]

So you've got musket balls coming from the road where the redcoats were, but.

[Dan Snow]

Also interesting from the yard, which really.

[General Gage]

Reinforced the idea that those flanking units.

[Dan Snow]

Those light infantry units, were moving along.

[General Gage]

The verge of the road through yards.

[Dan Snow]

And farms and houses, trying to push.

[General Gage]

Back any enemy troops from the verge of those roads. But also I think probably as they're.

[Dan Snow]

Entering a more built up area as.

[General Gage]

They approach Boston and Cambridge, pushing back.

[Dan Snow]

Any civilians, people who didn't particularly feel.

[General Gage]

They were involved in this fight.

[Dan Snow]

But of course, when people's blood is.

[General Gage]

Up, when the tempers are up, when.

[Dan Snow]

You'Ve had a long, gruelling day like.

[General Gage]

These redcoats have, suddenly every single person.

[Dan Snow]

Can look very like a militiaman. And there's a final fascinating room here downstairs, the kitchen, a new door here.

[General Gage]

I'll just open it now.

[Dan Snow]

And musket balls pass through this door.

[General Gage]

And indeed the frame, I can see one here.

[Dan Snow]

And then punch through the uprights on the stairs and into the heart of the house.

[General Gage]

And we think that's because there are.

[Dan Snow]

Actually redcoats in this kitchen firing on.

[General Gage]

Some militiamen that had taken shelter in the basement, which is the only safe place to be. We now learn these wooden structures as these musket balls flew through this neighborhood. Before I came here, I thought of Lexington, Sexton and Concord as a rural encounter.

[Dan Snow]

People firing volleys at each other in.

[General Gage]

The woods and rolling open pasture land outside Boston.

[Dan Snow]

But this is altogether different. This really gives the impression of an.

[General Gage]

Urban battle, almost a battle in a built up area. It would have been terrible place to be, lead flying from every direction.

[Dan Snow]

And this House really makes me think about the. Well, the nature of that violence, the.

[General Gage]

Spiral of violence that now had the.

[Dan Snow]

People here in its grip earlier in the day. Don't forget, earlier in the day those redcoats had helped put out fires in Concord, working with the local population. Now they were smashing into these homes, they were clearing them, they were firing musket balls in confined spaces, through doors, into a hidden enemy, they were smashing windows and inevitably they started to loot, they start to burn. Percy admitted he could not keep order and he said later the plundering was shameful. We know that a silver tankard was actually taken from this house and funnily enough, they managed to get it back from the pawnbroker. So it's still on display here.

[General Gage]

But what never came back was the mechanisms, the inside of a grandfather clock.

[Dan Snow]

That now stands in the entrance way, hollow and empty. As I look out this window here, I can still see the Boston Road. And if I look down it to the the left, I can see the.

[General Gage]

Place where one of the most legendary encounters took place. And that was the story of the remarkable 80 year old Samuel Whitmore.

[Dan Snow]

He was, well, he was a veteran.

[General Gage]

He'd fought through his life, he'd fought on the violent colonial frontier. And when the redcoats marched back through.

[Dan Snow]

This town, he grabbed his musket, he.

[General Gage]

Grabbed his pistols and he fired them onto the redcoats. And then he gripped his saber and he set to. And for his valor, he received a.

[Dan Snow]

Bullet in the face and 13 bayonet thrusts and he was left for dead.

[General Gage]

But extraordinarily he survived.

[Dan Snow]

He was taken to a tavern, treated, and he lived for another two decades. I very much doubt in all that time whether he ever had to buy his own beer.

[General Gage]

So this road that I'm standing on now would have just been a trail of destruction.

[Dan Snow]

Corpses, animal corpses, human corpses, wounded people left for dead.

[General Gage]

Jason Russell, tragically, was one of those that fell. One story says that he was. He was killed on his own doorstep.

[Dan Snow]

But either way, his body was laid.

[General Gage]

Out in the kitchen here alongside other.

[Dan Snow]

Militiamen at the end of that terrible day.

[General Gage]

It's very hard to be sure, but.

[Dan Snow]

It seems that the regulars lost something like 40 men killed here in Menotomy and 80 wounded.

[General Gage]

Those are shocking figures.

[Dan Snow]

And the roads to and from this town would have been clogged with refugees.

[General Gage]

Women and children desperately trying to escape the fighting.

[Dan Snow]

We call it the Battle of Lexing and Concord. But this is where the fighting was at its fiercest.

[General Gage]

The following day, Boston Minister David McClure.

[Dan Snow]

Walked the battlefield and said simply, dreadful were the vestiges of war on the road. Lord Percy said that it was torment.

[British Soldier]

It was like marching in a moving ring of fire. He actually decided he couldn't face trying to get it all the way to Boston.

[Dan Snow]

He knew the Cambridge militia would be.

[British Soldier]

Out barring the way, and so instead he turned for Charleston.

[Dan Snow]

At the outskirts of Charleston, the emboldened militia tried to block the road.

[British Soldier]

But Percy set his six pound cannons on them and tore ragged holes in their lines of artillery and allowed his men to break through. There's a great story about a 65 year old provincial called James Miller. He disobeyed the order by his militia superiors to retreat. I am too old to run, he said calmly. He stood his ground and he would never leave it. It's a familiar story in British military history. It was only once that the British soldiers were back at the coast, at a place underneath Bunker Hill that they.

[Dan Snow]

Could relax, because it was only there.

[British Soldier]

That they were under the guns of his Britannic Majesty's battleships. Not for the last time. The British safety, the British writ ran inland only as far as the range of a naval 32 pounder. At the end of that exhausting, bloody, terrible day, The British counted 73 dead, with 26 missing and 174 wounded.

[Dan Snow]

The British had lost more men than.

[British Soldier]

Wolfe had lost beneath the walls of Quebec in his epic assault on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. A generation before, the provincial figure was something like 50 dead and 39 wounded, but they had access to enormous pools of manpower, and so militarily, that number of dead did not really shift the balance.

[Dan Snow]

The British army, though at the end.

[British Soldier]

Of a very long, insecure supply chain. Well, for them, every experienced redcoat killed or wounded was a blow to their ambition to bring the colonies back to heel. What's extraordinary about Lexington Concord is how the strategic situation was transformed. Within hours and certainly days, a massive provincial army marched on Boston and blockaded the British. The survivors of the expedition under Percy, were forced to abandon Charleston. They had to retreat across the harbour to Boston proper, where the entire British army became trapped like fish in a barrel. General Gage had sought to nip the.

[Dan Snow]

Rebellion in the bud.

[British Soldier]

Instead, he just sprayed gasoline on its glowing embers. Far from being pacified or reconciled, the vast mass of the northern colonies was now a seething, open, proudly defined hotbed of revolution. By the end of that day, Tellingly, Gage refers to the provincials for the first time as the enemy. Britain is now obviously at War. The Americans step up their response. The Continental Congress, who'd been meeting to harmonize the, well, the actions of all.

[Dan Snow]

The different colonies, they transformed those colonial militias. They just re badged it as the Continental Army.

[British Soldier]

The US army was born in the aftermath of Lexington Concord. Its commander was a man called George Washington. That day had begun with a political crisis within the British Empire with different ideas and voices about how best to keep it together.

[Dan Snow]

By the end of the day, the.

[British Soldier]

British Empire is at war with what will become the United States of America, the American Republic. Everyone on the ground that day felt the hand of history on their shoulder. They knew what it meant.

[Dan Snow]

Lord Percy warned in a letter home.

[British Soldier]

You may depend on it that as the rebels have now had time to prepare, they are determined to go through with it. Nor will the insurrection here turn out so despicable as it is perhaps imagined at home. Well, Lord Percy was right. It was not a despicable rebellion at all.

[Dan Snow]

It was one that would morph into a great power war and lead to.

[British Soldier]

The emergence of the United States of America.

[Dan Snow]

We here on the podcast and history.

[British Soldier]

Hit more generally on the social Media, on the YouTube and on our subscription TV channel, we will be marking the events of that great war. We'll be hitting all the big 250th. We've got a documentary out now on our TV channel about Lexington, Concord.

[General Gage]

We'll be following that up with a.

[British Soldier]

Documentary about the siege of Boston.

[Dan Snow]

And next year we get to go.

[British Soldier]

To Long island, we get to go to Brooklyn. Brooklyn and chart the course of that astonishing confrontation when George Washington pulled off the Dunkirk of the American Revolutionary War, crossing the east river into Manhattan. But that for the moment is all.

[Dan Snow]

In the future, please subscribe to this.

[General Gage]

Podcast wherever you get your pods and.

[British Soldier]

It will just drop seamlessly into your feed.

[Dan Snow]

And don't forget to go and check.

[British Soldier]

Out our subscription TV channel. History hit multi award winning. But in the meantime, thanks so much for listening to this episode. Hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I enjoyed enjoyed recording it. See you next time.

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[Josie Santee]

I'm Josie Santee, health coach, wellness editor and host of the Every Girl podcast where we cut through the noise with realistic expert backed advice to help you thrive in every category of life while still loving the person that you already are. And part of loving yourself is being really authentic to you, including the clothes you wear. In partnership with Nordstrom, we're helping you update your spring wardrobe so your style is fit for your best self. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands like Skims, Mango Free People and Princess polly, all under $100. From trending sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles that you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make it easier than ever. Shop now in stores [e-mail].