Fusiliers Read Online Free Page B

the drum major and with a drummer boy mounted, rather unsteadily, on his back. It was the drum major’s solemn task to lead this unlikely pair three times around the table, while the room resounded to the acclamations of the company. Alas, in 1775 he did not make it. One of those present recorded that ‘the animal gave such a spring from the floor, that he dropped the rider upon the table, and then bouncing over the heads of some officers, he ran to the barracks’. Some of the ensemble spilled out into the cool New England night hallooing and cheering the goat, passers-by joining in. The officers of the 23rd had marked their special day and retired to the comatose sleep of over-indulgence, while those who despised the army’s presence in Boston prepared their rebellion.
     
    The congregation that filled the pews five days later on the sunny spring morning of Sunday, 6 March 1775, at the Old South Meeting House close by General Gage’s quarters was, to put it mildly, one of a more sober and serious disposition than that which had honoured Saint David. Many of the most articulate advocates of resistance to British power were there to hear the annual oration in commemoration of a confrontation five years earlier in which five locals had been killed by redcoats. This sad event had been dubbed the ‘Boston Massacre’ by enemies of the British Ministry or government.
    Although the great majority of those attending this service were clad in their Sunday best, there were red coats too visible in the hall. The last ties of civility had not yet been cut between the King’s servants and their enemies, and indeed some of the officers, including Frederick Mackenzie, who had come to this puritan place of worship were the self-same men who had participated in the excess and hilarity of 1 March. These officers and their more ardent foes regarded one another with suspicion and dislike, expecting a riot might break out at any moment. Many concealed cudgels and sticks.
    Joseph Warren, a noted Presbyterian minister and friend of Liberty, went to the pulpit. He began by reminding the congregation that their ancestors had come to America to escape persecution:
     
    Our fathers having nobly resolved never to wear the yoke of despotism, and seeing the European world, through insolence and cowardice, falling a prey to tyranny, bravely threw themselves upon the bosom of the ocean, determined to find freedom or perish in the glorious attempt.
     

    Outlining the colonists’ grievances against ministers in London, Dr Warren excoriated them for sending regiments to enforce their decrees on America, adding that ‘standing armies always endanger the liberty of the subject’. Warren could not openly call for revolt, for he must have suspected that some of those red-coated gentlemen were there simply to goad him into words that might see him clapped in jail charged with treason. Similarly the officers suspected that Warren might taunt them, in Mackenzie’s words, ‘to act improperly, and strike or lay hands on some of the party, which would have been the signal for a battle. It is certain both sides were ripe for it.’ Mackenzie was no fool though, far from it: he impressed superiors with his intelligence. His appearance also – strong brow, clear blue eyes, a beak of a nose – reinforced the sense of an experienced man who would not easily succumb to provocation.
    Some of Warren’s statements produced hisses from the officers. As they looked around they could see John Hancock, president of the Congress challenging British power, and Samuel Adams, regarded by many of the officers as an uncouth, corrupt rabble-rouser, and certainly someone who longed for the revolt to begin. As Warren came to his peroration, he called for a new equality in the relationship between Britain and the American colonies, and his audience heard him come as close as he dared to publicly advocating rebellion:
     
    if these pacifick measures are ineffectual; and it