Boston was the active centre whence the “disease of disagreement” spread. Stout, hard-headed Puritans, whose ancestors had left the mother country for freedom’s sake, were as little likely to submit to “taxation without representation,” in the latter days of the eighteenth century, as their forebears had been a hundred years before. “Let us be of one heart,” says one of them, “and stand fast in the liberties wherewith Christ has made us free, and may He, of His infinite mercy, grant us deliverance out of all our troubles.” But the home Government thought otherwise. Boston, as a port, was to be closed. General-Governor Gage was sent there to garrison it; and so doing, applied the match to all the political tinder which surrounded him, and was fully ready to burst into a flame. For not far from Boston the colonists had collected some military stores at Concord and Lexington, and these Gage decided on seizing. He had been _ordered_ to “take possession of colonial forts, seize all military stores, to repress rebellion by force, and imprison all suspects,” so the fault was not all his. But the detachment of the 10th and the marines were beaten back badly, and took refuge behind the reinforcements sent to help them in such a condition of rout that they “flung themselves down on the ground, with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, like those of dogs after a chase.” It was a bad beginning, to say the least of it, but it was curiously followed up; for the assailants were themselves assailed, and Boston was besieged by the “Provincials,” who had many men, boundless enthusiasm, but only a few guns and only sixty barrels of powder “in all Massachusetts.” But by now they had that courtly Virginian gentleman, George Washington, at their head, and without him the revolution that made an empire would have had faint chances of success. The only point of interest in this siege of Boston is the battle of Bunker’s or Breed’s Hill. It was the last effort but one to complete the ring of investment. The American General Prescott had attempted to hold this peninsula, between the Charles and Mystic rivers, and had fortified it with a poor breastwork and a still weaker obstacle afforded by a post and rail fence, screened by new-mown hay. But the fatal British failing of despising an adversary who could shoot, received additional emphasis. The casual attack of the flank companies of the 5th, 38th, 43rd, and 52nd, together with the 47th, the 1st marine battalion, and the 23rd, the latter of which suffered most severely, was met by a deadly fire at thirty paces, and it took three efforts to carry the weak defensive position, and then with a loss of 1200 officers and men out of about 2000. To add to the misery of the defeat may be added the absurdity of making the men go into action carrying 125 pounds of heavy marching order weight. It was the first pitched battle of the war, small as it was, and the colonists had won.