who attacked Lieutenant Lenthall’s Fusiliers in July. Loud, hard-drinking and violent, they embodied frontier spirit and proved almost impossible to discipline. The arrest of several for insolence led to a general mutiny on Prospect Hill in September 1775.
Washington’s ability to curb such excesses was initially stymied by the ethos of enthusiastic amateurism that had brought many of his soldiers to the colours. His political masters were loath to permit flogging and it took more than one year for a proper scheme of punishments to be set in place. Until then, lashes for any offence were limited to thirty-nine, although desertion carried the death penalty from November 1775 onwards. Dozens of mutinous riflemen from Prospect Hill received no more than a fine.
Problems of keeping order competed for the commander-in-chief’s attention with a host of others, from finding enough powder to procuring clothing and rations. After a few weeks, though, it dawned on Washington that ‘the enemy, by their not coming out, are, I suppose, afraid of us’. Gage’s inactivity created opportunities for an enterprising enemy commander to serve his own cause. A large detachment was sent north, to try to snuff out the British garrisons in Canada. Washington stepped up raids on land and at sea, giving privateers permission to stop the supplies coming in to Boston.
As the months passed, Congress appointed senior officers to its armies. Some were British-born army veterans. Others were men of property, kings of their own counties with far more wealth to their name than any officer of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. They sought to confirm their status with colonel’s or general’s commissions, producing squabbles and rivalries over patronage almost identical to those negotiated daily at Horse Guards, the British army’s headquarters in London.
There was another category of subordinate that came to serve Washington – those who, like the ordinary soldiers, took advantage of the heady possibilities of revolution. The most impressive of these were two men who found themselves in senior positions on the basis ofdrive and self-education alone: Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller who read his way to the command of the American artillery, and Nathaniel Greene, a Quaker from Rhode Island who turned his back on the pacifist ideology of his sect, enlisted in the militia, and was by his thirty-fourth birthday in June 1775 appointed the youngest Brigadier General in the continental service.
By October, Washington’s new initiatives to drive the British altogether from America (starving them in Boston and invading Canada) were having tangible effects. Down in the town below his lines, though, dramatic change was under way.
The Cerberus sailed into Boston Harbour on 6 October after a lengthy passage of the Atlantic. Information, along with many other commodities, had been in short supply and the frigate brought important news. The London newspapers carrying reports of Bunker Hill and of the response to that event were snapped up in every coffee house. Official letters, more importantly, signalled that the debacle of 17 June had cost General Gage his job. William Howe was to take over.
For those seeking advancement, the news of Gage’s ouster (dismissal) launched a bewildering array of possibilities. One officer writing home noted, ‘The dependents on the present commander-in-chief are down in the mouth and those who have expectations from the new one proportionately in spirits.’
Appointments, like everything else, had gone on in a slow and befuddled way since the war had begun. With Howe taking over, the scene was set for wholesale change and for dizzying displays in the black arts of patronage. Adding to the pace of change, the Ministry responded to the outbreak of war by planning a huge expansion in the army, and the miserable conditions of the siege caused quite a few officers to sell out, creating vacancies.
Thomas Mecan was one of the first
Washington’s ability to curb such excesses was initially stymied by the ethos of enthusiastic amateurism that had brought many of his soldiers to the colours. His political masters were loath to permit flogging and it took more than one year for a proper scheme of punishments to be set in place. Until then, lashes for any offence were limited to thirty-nine, although desertion carried the death penalty from November 1775 onwards. Dozens of mutinous riflemen from Prospect Hill received no more than a fine.
Problems of keeping order competed for the commander-in-chief’s attention with a host of others, from finding enough powder to procuring clothing and rations. After a few weeks, though, it dawned on Washington that ‘the enemy, by their not coming out, are, I suppose, afraid of us’. Gage’s inactivity created opportunities for an enterprising enemy commander to serve his own cause. A large detachment was sent north, to try to snuff out the British garrisons in Canada. Washington stepped up raids on land and at sea, giving privateers permission to stop the supplies coming in to Boston.
As the months passed, Congress appointed senior officers to its armies. Some were British-born army veterans. Others were men of property, kings of their own counties with far more wealth to their name than any officer of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. They sought to confirm their status with colonel’s or general’s commissions, producing squabbles and rivalries over patronage almost identical to those negotiated daily at Horse Guards, the British army’s headquarters in London.
There was another category of subordinate that came to serve Washington – those who, like the ordinary soldiers, took advantage of the heady possibilities of revolution. The most impressive of these were two men who found themselves in senior positions on the basis ofdrive and self-education alone: Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller who read his way to the command of the American artillery, and Nathaniel Greene, a Quaker from Rhode Island who turned his back on the pacifist ideology of his sect, enlisted in the militia, and was by his thirty-fourth birthday in June 1775 appointed the youngest Brigadier General in the continental service.
By October, Washington’s new initiatives to drive the British altogether from America (starving them in Boston and invading Canada) were having tangible effects. Down in the town below his lines, though, dramatic change was under way.
The Cerberus sailed into Boston Harbour on 6 October after a lengthy passage of the Atlantic. Information, along with many other commodities, had been in short supply and the frigate brought important news. The London newspapers carrying reports of Bunker Hill and of the response to that event were snapped up in every coffee house. Official letters, more importantly, signalled that the debacle of 17 June had cost General Gage his job. William Howe was to take over.
For those seeking advancement, the news of Gage’s ouster (dismissal) launched a bewildering array of possibilities. One officer writing home noted, ‘The dependents on the present commander-in-chief are down in the mouth and those who have expectations from the new one proportionately in spirits.’
Appointments, like everything else, had gone on in a slow and befuddled way since the war had begun. With Howe taking over, the scene was set for wholesale change and for dizzying displays in the black arts of patronage. Adding to the pace of change, the Ministry responded to the outbreak of war by planning a huge expansion in the army, and the miserable conditions of the siege caused quite a few officers to sell out, creating vacancies.
Thomas Mecan was one of the first
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