When the minutemen had
increased to four hundred, they advanced to the bridge and brought on a
fight which resulted in loss of life on both sides. Then, pushing on
across the bridge, they forced the British to withdraw into the town.
[Illustration: Map: Boston and Vicinity.]
The affair had become more serious than the British had expected. Even in
the town they could not rest, for an ever-increasing body of minutemen
kept swarming into Concord from every direction.
By noon Colonel Smith could see that it would be unwise to delay the
return to Boston. So, although his men had marched twenty miles, and had
had little or no food for fourteen hours, he gave the order for the return
march.
But when they started back, the minutemen kept after them and began a
deadly attack. It was an unequal fight. The minutemen, trained to woodland
warfare, slipped from tree to tree, shot down the worn and helpless
British soldiers, and then retreated only to return and repeat the
harassing attack.
[Illustration: Concord Bridge.]
The wooded country through which they were passing favored this kind of
fighting. But even in the open country every stone wall and hill, every
house and barn seemed to the exhausted British troops to bristle with the
guns of minutemen.
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