A month ago, the 250th anniversary of what is known as "The Battle of Bunker Hill" was celebrated in Boston. This was the first major battle in the American Revolution (Lexington and Concord had happened earlier, but they were more running skirmishes than a set-piece battle). Every American schoolchild knows (at the very least) this battle's name, and perhaps the legend (probably apocryphal) that the American rebels were told: "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," and that's about it.

This is somewhat intentional, I have to believe, since the battle itself was such a masterpiece of military incompetence, on both sides. The Americans picked the wrong ground to defend, while the British absolutely refused to attack in a way which would have all but guaranteed victory. Neither side really "won" -- the Americans were eventually forced to retreat, but the British suffered incredibly heavy losses, making their "victory" no more than a Pyrrhic one at best.

The first thing that American schoolchildren are taught wrong about the battle is its name. The battle actually happened on Breed's Hill, not Bunker Hill. And they certainly aren't taught about the boneheaded mistakes the Americans made (to be fair, they aren't taught much about the boneheaded mistakes the British made, either).

To set the stage for this battle... at this point, the Sons of Liberty and other ad hoc rebel groups had been systematically terrorizing Americans who were still loyal to the British crown. These "mobs" (a word that was still fairly recent at the time, a shortened version of "the mobile party" or "moveable populace") would harass local Loyalists and, at times, burn their houses down and tar and feather the occupants, followed by perhaps running them out of town on a rail. To be pulled from your bed by an armed mob, stripped naked, covered in tar and feathers and then forced to ride on a fence rail carried on the mob's shoulders (while crowds of people jeered at you or worse) was not exactly a pleasant experience, to put it mildly. Near Boston, Loyalist families (often the most prominent or "elite" citizens) had been fleeing such violence in their own towns and heading to Boston, which was defended by British soldiers. The rebels responded by essentially besieging the city. In Boston, food was scarce and conditions were pretty grim, but at least the Loyalists were somewhat protected by the British troops stationed there.

The rebel army (which is being charitable, they were really a collection of militias or a "rabble in arms") initially didn't do much other than control access into and out of the city. But then they decided to get a little more proactive.

Inside the city, the British army didn't do the intelligent thing, which would have been to occupy and fortify all of the heights overlooking the city -- all the hills on any side which could be used by the rebels to bombard the town with cannons. This was a stunning lack of defensive measures, and finally the rebels took advantage of it.

On the night of June 16th, 1775, around 1,200 rebel soldiers moved quietly to take one of those heights. The geography of what existed at the time is different than a map of modern-day Boston, it is worth mentioning (Wikipedia has a contemporaneous map of the whole battle that is useful). From the novel Oliver Wiswell, by Kenneth Roberts, here is a colorful description of the lay of the land:

The shape of Charlestown peninsula, as we saw it... was that of an enormous muskrat, half submerged, and swimming to the right. Farthest to the right was the low swelling of the muskrat's head; a little behind was the higher swelling of its shoulders; still farther back was the largest swelling of all: that of its rump. Protruding from the rump, long and flat on the water, like a muskrat's tail, was Charlestown Neck.

The "head," on the Wikipedia map, is Morton's Hill. The "shoulders" represent Breed's Hill, in the center of the peninsula. The "rump" is Bunker Hill. Morton's Hill was 35 feet high, Breed's Hill 62 feet high, and Bunker Hill 110 feet high.

The rebel troops were supposed to have set up fortifications on Bunker Hill, which makes perfect sense since it is the highest spot on the peninsula. But when they got there, a disagreement broke out among their military leaders. While some work was done on building fortifications on Bunker Hill, this was mostly abandoned and the primary redoubt -- a fortress made of ditches and 6-foot-high earthen walls -- was situated on Breed's Hill instead.

The British were actually aware of the rebels working to fortify the hill that night, but they did nothing about it at the time. One British warship began firing on Breed's Hill at four o'clock in the morning, and as the British woke up to the new reality they began bombarding the new fort with their cannons.

Then the British did nothing, for hours.

Let's just pause here -- before we get to the heart of the British military incompetence -- to reflect on the rebels' military incompetence. There were other hills surrounding Boston which could have been used to situate a rebel fortress. But instead of using one of the ones on the land side of the city, where the rebel forces could be provisioned from the countryside and have multiple avenues of retreat, they picked the wrong hill on the wrong plot of land.

The tail of that muskrat, at the time, was a very tight bottleneck of land: a little isthmus called Charlestown Neck. This was the only way onto or off of the peninsula other than by water routes. And British warships were in full control of the harbor. The rebels boxed themselves in, for no particular reason.

Now, looking at that map, try to think like a general back when sailing ships, cannons, and muskets were the most advanced weaponry there was. If you have full control of the water and lots of warships to move around, how would you attack a peninsula where a force had built a fort on the second-highest hill?

The answer isn't a tough one, really. It doesn't require much in the way of military experience or knowledge to see what the obvious right thing for the British to do actually was: encircle the island with ships, hammer the fort with cannonfire, and send ground troops in to first take the Neck (cutting off the rebels' retreat) and then to take Bunker Hill (where they could fire down on the main rebel fort, instead of up at it. Then all you'd have to do would be to sit back and wait for the rebels to run out of ammunition, food, or water -- or all three. You could capture or kill a large portion of the entire rebel army in one fell swoop. In fact, if this had been what the British had done, the Revolutionary War might never actually have been fought. Remember, this was a full year before the Declaration of Independence, so it might even have precluded America ever becoming a country. That's what could have happened if the British had managed a decisive victory here.

But of course, that's not what happened. Instead of doing the painfully obvious thing (in terms of military tactics), the British did the stupidest-possible thing, and then exacerbated it with some more rank stupidity.

British soldiers were loaded onto ships (after a delay of many hours) and they sailed from Boston. But instead of fully encircling the peninsula, they landed all their soldiers on Morton's Point -- the beaches directly beneath Morton's Hill (or the head of the muskrat). They made their landing as far as possible from the point where they should have landed (Charlestown Neck, the muskrat's tail), in other words.

This was such a monumentally stupid tactic, it almost defies belief. In fact, it was a stupid thing to do for multiple reasons. The first is that it left a clear avenue for the rebels to retreat -- whereas landing at the Neck would have eliminated that option. The second is that the only geographical feature between the landing and Breed's Hill was a very low hill -- much lower than Breed's Hill -- which meant the rebels would occupy the higher ground for the whole fight. If the British soldiers had landed on the Neck, they could have marched up to the much-less-well-defended and much-less-fortified Bunker Hill, and then just sat there and fired potshots down into the fortifications on Breed's Hill. The British could have pretty easily taken the high ground for the battle, in other words. But they didn't.

The British then decided to wait for a while before attacking. They even showed their hand by sending some advance troops on the route they planned on using to attack (to the right of the fort, from their point of view). The rebels took this time to reinforce their troops and to build hasty fortifications to block the expected British attack route. But the rebels had other problems as well, as confusion was rampant and few of their soldiers had ever fought a battle before. "Rabble in arms" is a lot closer to the reality than a smoothly-functioning army (remember, this was only the first major battle of the Revolutionary War).

The British finally began their attack. However, the field artillery they had brought along turned out to be of a different caliber than the ammunition they had brought for it (whoops!), leaving the British with no effective cannons to use against the fort. But that wasn't even the stupidest thing on the British side of the battle.

When the British troops did finally get underway and advance on the fort and on the hasty fortifications erected on their line of attack, they did so in sweltering heat (the town of Charlestown on the peninsula had been set afire by the British during the battle to flush out the rebel snipers which had been using it, which just added to the heat). And the redcoats were ordered to make the attack while still wearing full packs. A British soldier's military pack -- containing enough food and ammunition for a week -- weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 pounds, so it was no small thing. And the soldiers wore heavy woolen uniforms as well, which must have made the entire experience about as miserable as you can imagine, in a Boston summer.

So lines of redcoats -- with their full packs still on -- attacked up the hill, and across an open field. The rebels, already low on ammunition (before the battle had even begun), were told to hold their fire until the last possible moment (which is where that possibly-mythical "the whites of their eyes" command comes in to the story). Which they did -- they would wait and then rise up over the edge of the fortified earthen walls and send enormous volleys into the conveniently-arranged lines of British troops, to devastating effect.

You have to remember, when picturing this battle, that everyone was using muskets as their primary weapon. Muskets, like cannon, are muzzle-loaded. To get one ready to fire is a complicated and time-consuming process. You have to clean the barrel out, pour in some gunpowder and tamp it down, add a musket ball and tamp that down too, and then prime it with a pinch of gunpowder and cock the hammer. After all of this is finally done, you can point it and shoot it at someone. A professional soldier of the day might be able to get off two shots (perhaps three at the most, if they were lightning-fast reloaders) per minute.

From this point on, the battle went pretty much as we were taught as schoolchildren. The British lines were decimated in the first attack, and they were forced to retreat. They regrouped (while still wearing those heavy packs) and tried again. The same thing happened -- the rebels, safe behind their walls, shredded the British lines. So the redcoats retreated a second time. It wasn't until the third attack -- when finally the British soldiers were allowed to dump their packs in a pile before making the assault -- that the Brits succeeded in routing the rebels. This was largely due to the rebels having run out of powder and ammunition, which just goes to show how ill-prepared the American forces truly were at this point in history.

The rebels fled back to Bunker Hill and then completely off the peninsula, in a rout. Once again, the British could have just continued advancing and easily have torn the fleeing army to shreds. They could have wiped out (or captured) a major portion of the rebel forces at that time. But they didn't. They just sat on Breed's Hill and let all of the ragtag rebel army escape to fight another day.

The British army technically won the battle -- but at great cost. The numbers tell the grim story: 226 dead and 828 wounded on the British side, to only 140 dead and maybe 300 wounded on the rebel side. Many of the casualties on the British side were officers, as well.

The entire battle was a fiasco, with both sides contributing to the military incompetence of it all. To be sure, the soldiers involved showed real bravery (on both sides), while executing their incompetent orders. Some soldiers fled the field (again, on both sides), but by no means all. I do not diminish the bravery of any of the soldiers that day, while I heap scorn on the incompetence of the military generals on both sides of the battle.

The rebels picked a truly stupid point to make their stand. The British, rather than easily wiping them out or capturing entire militias, chose the stupidest tactics possible in their attack. The rebels claimed it all as a great victory (which is largely how it is taught to schoolchildren), but in fact they had been routed in the end. Later on, they did fortify other hills surrounding Boston and eventually forced the British to essentially evacuate the city's Loyalists (who all sailed up to Canada) and abandon the city to the rebels. So in the end, the rebels did achieve their military goal while the British had to suffer an ignominious retreat. And, as always, the (ultimate) winners are the ones who got to write the history books, so the Battle of Bunker Hill lives on in the American story as a smashing victory -- even though it wasn't, and even though it was actually fought on Breed's Hill.

[Editorial Note: The author Kenneth Roberts is mostly-forgotten these days, but his historical novels are certainly worth reading for anyone who would like a completely different take on colonial America and the period of the American Revolution. The novel I quoted here, Oliver Wiswell, follows the American Revolution from beginning to end, exposing plenty of other tales of military incompetence along the way (mostly on the British side, although it is written from the point of view of a Loyalist). It is an eye-opening way to read about American history, since it shows how what we were all taught as schoolchildren is not always strictly accurate, so I recommend them (Northwest Passage is another one worth reading) to everyone interested in such things. Oh, and my apologies to my readers for being so lazy that it took me a month to write this historical article and post it. Mea culpa.]

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant