*The French and Indian War had ended in a great victory for Britain and the colonies, but its aftermath tore the British Empire apart.

*To prevent future wars with the Indians following Pontiac’s Rebellion, the new king of Great Britain, George III, issued the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding all settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.  This infuriated the colonists who thought they had fought for the past nine years to gain those lands.

*Furthermore, Pitt had won his war but had to raise taxes and gone deep into debt to do it.  After the war, some of those taxes were passed on to Americans who were unaccustomed to direct taxation from London. 

*To organise protests and keep leaders of different colonies in communication with each other, committees of correspondence were formed.  To make sure that people (particularly merchants) went along with decisions made by the committees of correspondents, committees of safety were created to enforce boycotts and other agreements of protest.

*One of the most famous groups to protest British taxes and other actions were the Sons of Liberty of Boston.  They met under the ‘Liberty Tree,’ a large elm tree near Boston Common (a flag hung in the branches was a signal that the Sons would meet soon). 

*Among other things, the Sons of Liberty publicised the Boston Massacre as propaganda and planned the Boston Tea Party, in which sixty Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawk Indians dumped £10,000 worth of tea into Boston Harbour while 2,000 locals stood around and cheered.

*The Boston Tea Party was too much, and the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts (which, combined with the Quebec Act, were known as the Intolerable Acts) in 1774. 

*The Coercive Acts shut down Boston Harbour until all the taxes were paid and the tea itself was paid for, removed Governor Hutchinson from office and replaced him with General Thomas Gage who had the power to appoint a council and forbid town meetings, ensured that royal officials charged with any crime would be tried in England (not the colonies), and introduced more troops to enforce the laws, who had to be supported any way the military say fit (even in private homes). 

*Parliament also passed the Quebec Act, which preserved Catholicism, the French language, and other traditions in Quebec while enlarging its borders down to the Ohio River, something many Americans saw as a threat to their land and their religion.

*The Virginia House of Burgesses called for a day of prayer for Massachusetts and was disbanded by Governor Dunmore, (who fled Virginia a year later and tried to govern from a ship off the coast—among other things, he offered freedom to any slave who would fight for Britain). 

*Meeting in the Raleigh Tavern just down the street from the capitol, Virginia’s House of Burgesses called for a meeting of all the colonies to decide what to do next.  This became the First Continental Congress, which met for a short time but agreed to hold a Second Continental Congress the next year, which ended up governing America for most of the Revolutionary War.

*General Gage was a veteran of the French and Indian War, had earlier been governor of Montreal, and was generally sympathetic to America, but he had a duty to keep Boston peaceful and Massachusetts part of the British Empire and he felt that the people of Boston were bullies, trying to push the British government and the other colonies around.  He had about 4,000 men under his command in a town of 16,000.  He captured a small supply of gunpowder from a storehouse near Boston, but was unable to successfully locate any more, because this one raid had put the colonists on the defensive.

*By the spring of 1775 Gage was ready to move again.  He had learned that the local militia had a store of gunpowder and other supplies at Concord.  Furthermore, Samuel Adams and John Hancock were believed to be in the area, and Gage was under orders to capture them.

*Gage organised his forces in secret, but the Sons of Liberty found out about them, and Paul Revere and William Dawes rode out to warn Adams, Hancock, and the people of Lexington and Concord.  They were assisted by Dr Samuel Prescott, whom they met in Lexington.  All three men were detained by the British:  Revere was arrested, but later released when fighting began, and Dawes was forced to abandon his ride to escape, but Prescott got away and successfully got word to Concord.

*The British forces that marched on Lexington and Concord on 19 April, 1775 were made up of 700 of the best men the regiments under Gage’s command had to offer:  companies of grenadiers and light infantry from different regiments and one battalion of Royal Marines.

*The grenadiers were elite shock troops chosen for their height and strength.  Light infantry had become an important part of the army during the French and Indian War, being meant to serve as skirmishers and to fight more independently than most regulars—they fought in pairs, so that one could reload while the other fired, and they could fire at will and choose their targets, unlike the regulars who fired on command in a massed volley.  The light infantry were also considered elite units.  Unfortunately, they were combined at the last minute under the command of officers who did not know each other or their men very well, so Gage’s elite soldiers ended up being poorly led. 

*Show Revolution from Introduction to 20:30.

*The American Revolution is generally considered to have begun at Lexington and Concord and has been described as the Shot Heard Round the World.

*The British ultimately sent out 1,500 men (including the relief column), and lost between 200 and 300 killed, wounded, and captured.  Although the colonial militia had only begun with 77 men at Lexington, by the end of the day about 3,800 men had come out to fight and soon about 15,000 militia surrounded Boston and Gage was trapped.

*In the 1700s, the city of Boston was almost on an island, connected to the mainland by the Boston Neck, which the militia blocked.

*In May, Britain sent more soldiers until Gage had about 6,000 men under his command.  He was also joined by three more generals:  William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton.

*On 16 June, colonial Colonel William Prescott led about 1,200 men under cover of darkness to Charleston (now a suburb of Boston, then its own village on its own peninsula across the harbour) to prepare defensive works from which they could bombard Boston itself.  They had been ordered to fortify Bunker Hill, but instead fortified Breed’s Hill (against their orders, but they chose to do so because it offered a better view of Boston for a potential bombardment).

*General Howe was sent to drive the militia out of Charleston with about 1,500 men.  Seeing this, the colonists reinforced their position, bringing their total to about 2,400 men.  The British sent more men as well, to a total of about 3,000.

*Show Revolution from 32:30-42:20.

*The British ultimately made a frontal assault on Breed’s Hill and were slaughtered.  According to legend the militia were given orders to hold their fire—‘don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes’—to make sure they did the most damage, physically and psychologically. 

*The British charged again, and were driven off again.

*The British were only able to take possession of the hill after a third charge because the militia ran out of ammunition.  Even then, most of the colonists were able to escape across Charleston Neck to safety.

*The British lost over 1,000 men killed and wounded, including many officers, for whom the militia deliberately aimed.  The colonial militia lost about 450 killed, wounded, and captured, including Dr Joseph Warren, a prominent Son of Liberty, who was shot in the head.  When his body was dug up by his brothers and friends ten months later, Paul Revere was able to identify him by a false tooth he had placed in Warren’s jaw—possibly the first identification of a body by dental records.

*Although the British had forced the militia to retreat at Breed’s Hill, it was a Pyrrhic victory.  The term Pyrrhic Victory comes from King Pyrrhos of Epirus who suffered irreplaceable losses fighting the Romans in 280 and 279 BC.  He supposedly said, ‘If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.’

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