On This Day In History...

Two hundred and thirty-six years ago...

Them are some awful short grenadiers...
Looking mighty spruce and well-fed, too, considering the night they've had.


(OK, the narration is a bit obnoxious...)

And, just when things are beginning to go bad for the Forces of Oppression, they get much, much worse...

We tend to forget just what a horror the Lobsterbacks had of "militia in the treeline" for much of the war, due to the casualties they took on what was afterwards known as The Battle Road.  Despite what Howard Fast had going on in his book April Morning*, it is highly unlikely that there were any rifles involved in the battles of Lexington and Concord; the woods were, however, infested with colonials with no respect for propriety or the proper. gentlemanly way of making war, and generations of experience and received wisdom about the Indian way of doing so.

***

*Available at Netflix, but not, apparently, on YouTube, in even the shortest scenes.
Previous posts on the topic: Patriot's Day, "April Morning", both from 2008, and "...Heard 'Round The World", from 2009.  Last year was pretty political, too: Patriot's Day 2010.