Now to look at the military situation. Already John Thomas, a physician of Kingston, had been made second in command under Ward; and Richard Gridley, an old Louisbourg artilleryman, had been made chief engineer. As yet the New England colonies were the only ones which had sent their armed men to the scene. The Massachusetts men had taken post mostly at Cambridge, near the college; and here, as the days went on, came also a Connecticut regiment under Israel Putnam, who had left his plough in its furrow. So, as June began, there had assembled on this side of Boston between seven and eight thousand men, eager, but poorly equipped, and with a small supply of powder. On the Roxbury side, fronting the British lines on Boston Neck, there were about four thousand Massachusetts men, under John Thomas, supported by a camp a little farther out, at Jamaica Plain, to which Joseph Spencer had come with another Connecticut regiment, and Nathanael Greene, with a body of Rhode Islanders. Thomas had some field-pieces and a few heavy cannon, and his force constituted the army's right wing. Its left wing was upon the Mystick at Medford, and near Charlestown Neck, and here were the New Hampshire men, and among their officers the old Indian fighter, John Stark, was conspicuous. Three companies of Massachusetts men constituted the extreme left at Chelsea. So, as the summer came on, perhaps about 16,000 men in all were encamped as a fragile army besieging Boston. General Ward exercised by sufferance a superior authority over all, though as yet no colony but New Hampshire had instructed its troops to yield him obedience. As Massachusetts claimed three quarters of the entire force thus drawn together, the assumption of chief command by her first officer was natural enough in a common cause. The force which this sixteen thousand loosely organized men dared to hold imprisoned in Boston was a well-compacted army of somewhere from five to ten thousand men, for it is difficult amid conflicting reports to determine confidently a fixed number. On the 25th of May Gage had been joined by a reinforcement, accompanied by three other general officers,—Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe.