_C. Hudson, History of Lexington, chapters 6-8._ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April). The first Provincial Convention in New York. See NEW YORK: A. D. 1775 (APRIL). {3223} UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April-May). The siege of Boston begun. "Reinforcements of foreign troops and supplies were constantly arriving in Boston. Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne came, as generals, on the 25th of May. Bitterness, ridicule, and boasting, with all the irritating taunts of a mercenary soldiery, were freely poured on the patriots and on the 'mixed multitude' which composed the germ of their army yet to be. The British forces had cooped themselves up in Bos·ton, and the provincials determined that they should remain there, with no mode of exit save by the sea. The pear-shaped peninsula, hung to the mainland only by the stem called the 'Neck,' over which the tide-waters sometimes washed, was equally an inconvenient position for crowding regiments in war-like array, and a convenient one for the extemporized army which was about to beleaguer them there. … The town of Charlestown, which lay under the enemy's guns, had contained a population of between two and three thousand. The interruption of all the employments of peace, and the proximity of danger, had brought poverty and suffering upon the people. They had been steadily leaving the town, with such of their effects as they could carry with them. It proved to be well for them that they had acted upon the warning. It would seem that there were less than 200 of its inhabitants remaining in it at the time of the battle, when the flames kindled by the enemy and bombs from a battery on Copp's Hill laid it in ashes. On the third day after the affair at Concord, the Provincial Congress again assembled, voted to raise at once 13,000 men, to rally at Cambridge and the neighborhood, and asked aid from the other provinces, to which Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire responded. The forts, magazines, and arsenals, such as they then were, were secured for the country. … Of the 15,000 men then gathered, by the cry of war, at Cambridge and Roxbury, all virtually, but not by formal investment, under the command of General Ward, nearly 10,000 belonged to Massachusetts, and the remainder to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. They have been designated since, at various times and by different writers, under the extreme contrast of terms, as an 'organized army,' and a 'mob.' Either of these terms would be equally inappropriate. … Our troops were 'minute-men' extemporized into fragmentary companies and skeleton regiments. The officers, chosen on the village-green or in its public-house, paying for the honor by a treat, or perhaps because they kept the premises where the treat could be most conveniently furnished, were not commissioned or