Reënforcements under Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne had already increased the strength of that garrison to nearly ten thousand men. It had become impatient of confinement, and restive under the presence of increasing but ill-armed adversaries who eagerly challenged every picket post, and begrudged every market product smuggled, or snatched, by the purveyors or officers and soldiers of the Crown. Besides all this, the garrison began to realize the fate which afterwards befell that of Clinton in Philadelphia, in the demoralization and loss of discipline which ever attach to an idle army when enclosed within city limits. When Burgoyne landed at Boston, to support Gage, he contemptuously spoke of “ten thousand _peasants_ who kept the King’s troops shut up.” Gradually, the _peasants_ encroached upon the outposts. An offensive movement to occupy Charlestown Heights and menace the Colonial headquarters at Cambridge, with a view to more decisive action against their maturing strength, had been planned and was ready for execution. It was postponed, as of easy accomplishment at leisure; but the breaking morning of June 17, 1775, revealed the same Heights to be in possession of the “peasant” militia of America. The Battle of Bunker Hill followed. Each force engaged lost one-third of its numbers, but the aggregate of the British loss was more than double that of the Colonies. It made a plain issue between the Colonists and the British army, and was no longer a controversy of citizens with the civil authority. The impatience of the two armies to have a fight had been gratified, and when Franklin was advised of the facts, and of the nerve with which so small a detachment of American militia had faced and almost vanquished three times their number of British veterans, he exclaimed, “The King has lost his Colonies.” Many of the officers who bore part in that determining action gained new laurels in later years. Prescott, who led his thousand men to that achievement, served with no less gallantry in New York. Stark, so plucky and persistent along the Mystic river, was afterwards as brave and dashing at Trenton, Bennington, and Springfield. And Seth Warner, a volunteer at Bunker Hill, and comrade of Allen in the capture of Ticonderoga, participated in the battles of Hubbardton and Bennington, and the Saratoga campaign, during the invasion of Burgoyne in 1777. Of the British participants, or spectators, a word is due. Clinton, destined to be Washington’s chief antagonist, had urged General Howe to attack Washington’s army at Cambridge, before it could mature into a well equipped and well disciplined force. He was overruled by General Howe, who with all his scientific qualities as a soldier, never, in his entire military career, was quick to follow up an advantage once acquired; and soon after, the junior officer was transferred to another field of service.