George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[308] and revenge and shame at their flight led the regu-

Chap. XXVIII} 1775. April 19.

lars to plunder houses by the wayside, to destroy in wantonness windows and furniture, to set fire to barns and houses.

Beyond Lexington the troops were attacked by men chiefly from Essex and the lower towns. The fire from the rebels slackened, till they approached West Cambridge, where Joseph Warren and William Heath, both of the committee of safety, the latter a provincial general officer, gave for a moment some little appearance of organization to the resistance, and the fight grew sharper and more determined. Here the company from Danvers, which made a breastwork of a pile of shingles, lost eight men, caught between the enemy's flank guard and main body. Here, too, a musket ball grazed the hair of Warren, whose heart beat to arms, so that he was ever in the place of greatest danger. The British became more and more ‘exasperated;’ and indulged themselves in savage cruelty. In one house they found two aged, helpless, unarmed men, and butchered them both without mercy, stabbing them, breaking their skulls, and dashing out their brains. Hannah Adams, wife of Deacon Joseph Adams of Cambridge, lay in child-bed with a babe of a week old, but was forced to crawl with her infant in her arms and almost naked to a corn shed, while the soldiers set her house on fire. At Cambridge, an idiot, perched on a fence to gaze at the regular army, was wantonly shot at and killed. Of the Americans there were never more than four hundred together at any one time; but as some grew tired or used up their ammunition, others took their places, and though there was