the hill were some four thousand of the finest troops
in the world, stiffened with all the strength that prestige and
practice could give them. It did not seem on the face of it a very
equal combat; it did not seem to the English generals that it ought to
take very long to {178} march from the bottom to the top of the hill
and make short work of the mutinous peasants on its summit. The best
indeed that the mutinous peasants could hope for when the British were
upon them was to be shot or bayoneted as quickly as possible, for the
terms of Gage's proclamation directly threatened with the gallows every
rebel taken with arms in his hands.

But at Breed Hill, as at Concord, the unexpected came to pass. The
British troops were unable to endure the destructive fire of the
colonists. Again and again they advanced over the incline as calmly as
if on parade; again and again they reeled backward with shattered
ranks, leaving grim piles of dead upon the fire-swept slope. The
execution was terrible; regiments that marched up the hill as if to
certain victory fell back from it a mere remnant of themselves, leaving
most of their men and almost all their officers behind. For awhile the
fight was a succession of catastrophes to the force under Howe's
command. It looked as if Breed Hill would never be taken. But there
came a time when the men who held it could hold it no longer. Their
supply of powder began to run out, and with their means of keeping up
their fire their power of holding their position came to an end. Then
came a last charge of Howe's rallied forces, this time in the lightest
of marching array, a last volley from behind the earth-works, and Breed
Hill was in the hands of the British. It was captured at the last
without much bloodshed, without much loss to its garrison. The smoke
hung so thick about the enclosure where the rebels had held their own
so long and so well that it was not easy for the bayonets of the
conquerors to do much execution, and the defenders of Breed Hill
slipped away for the most part under cover of the mist they themselves
had made. Indeed, there was little inclination for pursuit on the part
of the victors. They had done what they had been set to do, but they
had done it at a cost which for the time made it impossible for them to
attempt to pursue an advantage so dearly bought. They did not, could
not know the strength of their enemy; they were content to hold the
ground which had be