was a stir of preparation in the American camp at Cambridge, and
late at night the men fell in near Harvard College.

Across the Charles River north from Boston, on a peninsula, lay
the village of Charlestown, and rising behind it was Breed's
Hill, about seventy-four feet high, extending northeastward to
the higher elevation of Bunker Hill. The peninsula could be
reached from Cambridge only by a narrow neck of land easily swept
by British floating batteries lying off the shore. In the dark
the American force of twelve hundred men under Colonel Prescott
marched to this neck of land and then advanced half a mile
southward to Breed's Hill. Prescott was an old campaigner of the
Seven Years' War; he had six cannon, and his troops were
commanded by experienced officers. Israel Putnam was skillful in
irregular frontier fighting, and Nathanael Greene, destined to
prove himself the best man in the American army next to
Washington himself, could furnish sage military counsel derived
from much thought and reading.

Thus it happened that on the morning of the 17th of June General
Gage in Boston awoke to a surprise. He had refused to believe
that he was shut up in Boston. It suited his convenience to stay
there until a plan of campaign should be evolved by his superiors
in London, but he was certain that when he liked he could, with
his disciplined battalions, brush away the besieging army. Now he
saw the American force on Breed's Hill throwing up a defiant and
menacing redoubt and entrenchments. Gage did not hesitate. The
bold aggressors must be driven away at once. He detailed for the
enterprise William Howe, the officer destined soon to be his
successor in the command at Boston. Howe was a brave and