Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/32

20 bastions. The batteries are planted, the mortars got ready; the furnaces and magazines are all prepared. The three hills are grim with war. From Copps-hill men look anxious to that memorable height the other side of the water. Provisions are cut off in Boston; no man may pass the lines; the aqueduct refuses its genial supply; children cry for their expected food. The soldiers parade, looking somewhat tremulous and pale; all the able-bodied have come, the vilest most willingly; some are brought by force of drink, some by force of arms. Some are in brilliant dresses, some in their working frocks. The banners are consecrated by solemn words. Your church-towers are military posts of observation. There are Old Testament prayers to the "God of Hosts" in all the churches of Boston; prayers that God would curse the men of Cambridge, make their wives widows, their children fatherless, their houses a ruin, the men corpses, meat for the beast of the field and the bird of the air. Last night the Bostonians made a feint of attacking Charlestown, raining bombs and red-hot cannon-balls from Copps-hill, till they have burnt a thousand houses, where the British burnt not half so many. Women and children fled screaming from the blazing rafters of their homes. The men of Middlesex crowd into Charlestown.

In the meantime the Bostonians hastily repair a bridge or two; some pass that way, some over the Neck; all stealthily by night; and while the foe expect them at Bunker's, amid the blazing town, they have stolen a march and rush upon Cambridge itself. The Cambridge men turn back. The battle is fiercely joined. You hear the cannon, the sharp report of musketry. You crowd the hills, the housetops; you line the Common, you cover the shore, yet you see but little in the sulphurous cloud. Now the Bostonians yield a little, a reinforcement goes over. All the men are gone; even the grey-headed who can shoulder a firelock. They plunge into battle, mad with rage, madder with rum. The chaplains loiter behind.