Cambridge from Bunker Hill. When Gage received his reinforcements at the end of May, he determined to repair his strange neglect by which the hills on the peninsula had been allowed to remain unoccupied and unfortified. As soon as the Americans became aware of Gage’s intention they determined to frustrate it, and accordingly, on the night of the 16th of June, a force of about 1200 men, under Colonel William Prescott and Major-General Israel Putnam, with some engineers and a few field-guns, occupied Breed’s Hill—to which the name Bunker Hill is itself now popularly applied—and when daylight disclosed their presence to the British they had already strongly entrenched their position. Gage lost no time in sending troops across from Boston with orders to assault. The British force, between 2000 and 3000 strong, under (Sir) William Howe, supported by artillery and by the guns of men-of-war and floating batteries stationed in the anchorage on either side of the peninsula, were fresh and well disciplined. The American force consisted for the most part of inexperienced volunteers, numbers of whom were already wearied by the trench work of the night. As communication was kept up with their camp the numbers engaged on the hill fluctuated during the day, but at no time exceeded about 1500 men. The village of Charlestown, from which a galling musketry fire was directed against the British, was by General Howe’s orders almost totally destroyed by hot shot during the attack. Instead of attempting to cut off the Americans by occupying the neck to the rear of their position, Gage ordered the advance to be made up the steep and difficult ascent facing the works on the hill. Whether or not in obedience—as tradition asserts—to an order to reserve fire until they could see the whites of their assailants’ eyes, the American volunteers with admirable steadiness waited till the attack was on the point of being driven home, when they delivered a fire so sustained and deadly that the British line broke in disorder. A second assault, made like the first, with the precision and discipline of the parade-ground met the same fate, but Gage’s troops had still spirit enough for a third assault, and this time they carried the position with the bayonet, capturing five pieces of ordnance and putting the enemy to flight. The loss of the British was 1054 men killed and wounded, among whom were 89 commissioned officers; while the American casualties amounted to 420 killed and wounded, including General Joseph Warren, and 30 prisoners. (See American War of Independence.)
The significance of the battle of Bunker Hill is not, however, to be gauged by the losses on either side, heavy as they were in proportion to the numbers engaged, nor by its purely military results, but by the moral effect which it produced; and when it is considered from this standpoint its far-reaching consequences can hardly be over-estimated. “It roused at once the fierce instinct of combat in America …, and dispelled … the almost superstitious belief in the impossibility of encountering regular troops with hastily levied volunteers … No one questioned the conspicuous gallantry with which the provincial troops had supported a long fire from the ships and awaited the charge of the enemy, and British soldiers had been twice driven back in disorder before their fire."[1] The pride which Americans naturally felt in such an achievement, and the self-confidence which it inspired, were increased when they learnt that the small force on Bunker Hill had not been properly reinforced, and that their ammunition was running short before they were dislodged from their position.[2] Had the character of the fighting on that day been other than it was; had the American volunteers been easily, and at the first assault, driven from their fortified position by the troops of George III., it is not impossible that the resistance to the British government would have died out in the North American colonies through lack of confidence in their own power on the part of the colonists. Bunker Hill, whatever it may have to teach the student of war, taught the American colonists in 1775 that the odds against them in the enterprise in which they had embarked were not so overwhelming as to deny them all prospect of ultimate success.
In 1843 a monument, 221 ft. high, in the form of an obelisk, of Quincy granite, was completed on Breed’s Hill (now Bunker Hill) to commemorate the battle, when an address was delivered by Daniel Webster, who had also delivered the famous dedicatory oration at the laying of the corner-stone in 1825. Bunker Hill day is a state holiday.
See R. Frothingham, The Centennial: Battle of Bunker Hill (Boston, 1895), and Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston, 1865); Boston City Council, Celebration of Centen. Aniv. of Battle of Bunker Hill (Boston, 1875); G. E. Ellis, Hist. of Battle of Bunker’s (Breed’s) Hill (Boston, 1875); S. Sweet, Who was the Commander at Bunker Hill? (Boston, 1850); W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii (London, 1883); Sir George O. Trevelyan, The American Revolution (London, 1899); Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. iii. pp. 153 seq. (London, 1902). (R. J. M.)
BUNN, ALFRED (1796–1860), English theatrical manager, was appointed stage-manager of Drury Lane theatre, London, in 1823. In 1826 he was managing the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, and in 1833 he undertook the joint management of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, London. In this undertaking he met with vigorous opposition. A bill for the abolition of the patent theatres was passed in the House of Commons, but on Bunn’s petition was thrown out by the House of Lords. He had difficulties first with his company, then with the lord chamberlain, and had to face the keen rivalry of the other theatres. A longstanding quarrel with Macready resulted in the tragedian assaulting the manager. In 1840 Bunn was declared a bankrupt, but he continued to manage Drury Lane till 1848. Artistically his control of the two chief English theatres was highly successful. Nearly every leading English actor played under his management, and he made a courageous attempt to establish English opera, producing the principal works of Balfe. He had some gift for writing, and most of the libretti of these operas were translated by himself. In The Stage Before and Behind the Curtain (3 vols., 1840) he gave a full account of his managerial experiences. He died at Boulogne on the 20th of December 1860.
BUNNER, HENRY CUYLER (1855–1896), American writer, was born in Oswego, New York, on the 3rd of August 1855. He was educated in New York City. From being a clerk in an importing house, he turned to journalism, and after some work as a reporter, and on the staff of the Arcadian (1873), he became in 1877 assistant editor of the comic weekly Puck. He soon assumed the editorship, which he held until his death in Nutley, N.J., on the 11th of May 1896. He developed Puck from a new struggling periodical into a powerful social and political organ. In 1886 he published a novel, The Midge, followed in 1887 by The Story of a New York House. But his best efforts in fiction were his short stories and sketches—Short Sixes (1891), More Short Sixes (1894), Made in France (1893), Zadoc Pine and Other Stories (1891), Love in Old Cloathes and Other Stories (1896), and Jersey Street and Jersey Lane (1896). His verses—Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere (1884), containing the well-known poem, The Way to Arcady; Rowen (1892); and Poems (1896), edited by his friend Brander Matthews—display a light play of imagination and a delicate workmanship. He also wrote clever vers de société and parodies. Of his several plays (usually written in collaboration), the best was The Tower of Babel (1883).
BUNSEN, CHRISTIAN CHARLES JOSIAS, Baron von (1791–1860), Prussian diplomatist and scholar, was born on the 25th of August 1791 at Korbach, an old town in the little German principality of Waldeck. His father was a farmer who was driven by poverty to become a soldier. Having studied at the Korbach grammar school and Marburg university, Bunsen went in his nineteenth year to Göttingen, where he supported himself by teaching and later by acting as tutor to W. B. Astor, the American merchant. He won the university prize essay of the year 1812 by a treatise on the Athenian Law of Inheritance, and a few months later the university of Jena granted him the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy. During 1813 he travelled with Astor in South Germany, and then turned to the study of the religion, laws, language and literature of the Teutonic
