Shortly before 10:00 on the night of April 18, 1775, sergeants entered the barracks of the British soldiers quartered in Boston. They began assembling a force to march on the Massachusetts interior. The sergeants spoke in hushed tones to the men they gently shook awake, guiding them out the rear of the barracks so noiselessly that no one else stirred, not even the sentries at their posts. Already outfitted and now assembled, the men were unaware of their destination but knew they should remain silent as they moved through the streets. When a stray dog spotted them and barked, a grenadier soundlessly broke ranks and killed him with a bayonet. Thus, the 700 soldiers reached the beach near a newly constructed powder magazine and boarded boats that glided out onto Back Bay, their oars covered in fabric, making them heavy but silent. The element of surprise was paramount to their mission, and their officers were pleased by the discipline that had preserved it.

The two pinpoints of light that had briefly appeared from the steeple of Christ Church had gone unnoticed by the British. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem about Paul Revere’s ride has misled generations about the reason for the lanterns in the church’s belfry. Contrary to popular belief, they were not a signal to Revere about a British route by water instead of land. Instead, they were an alert arranged by Revere himself to the Sons of Liberty, informing them that British soldiers were beginning an operation that Americans had been aware of for days.

The supposed secrecy of the British would have been a farce if not for the killing later on. Vexed and bewildered by an intractable crisis and temperamental colonists, General Thomas Gage, had watched a worsening situation. The country to the west was rife with drum-beating militia, and bonfires and musket reports could mobilize men in minutes. A Committee of Correspondence ominously communicated with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, while a body styled as the Massachusetts Provincial Congress acted as a de facto government, supplanting the king’s authority. Gage, the king’s representative first as the Bay Colony’s governor and now as a general in charge of maintaining peace, was both embarrassed and exasperated. As tensions escalated, the stern expressions of Bostonians made British soldiers feel like an occupying force. They sometimes acted like one. 

In Boston, Dr. Joseph Warren had become a central point of contact for colonial discontent, and he had summoned Paul Revere to his house at almost the same time the British soldiers were leaving their barracks. From his intelligence network, Warren suspected the British were either heading for Lexington up the Charles River to arrest rebel leaders or farther on to Concord to confiscate munitions and cannon. Warren had already sent William Dawes overland to Lexington, but to be sure someone got through he wanted Revere to take a short though more perilous route to Lexington. Upon leaving Warren’s home, Revere arranged to have the lanterns flashed from Christ Church. He then had friends row him across the river to Charlestown. The moon was rising and a flood tide was swinging HMS Somerset at anchor, giving sentinels an excellent chance to see Revere’s boat, but it kept in the shadows near the shore and safely delivered him. He was given a fast horse but also a disconcerting warning. British officers were already patrolling the road to Lexington. 

That was terrible news. Revere knew that he was well ahead of the lumbering and large body of soldiers still in their boats behind him, but prowling patrols in his front would have made a less determined man pause. Instead, Revere swung himself into the saddle and spurred the horse to a gallop. It was an hour before midnight.

A few minutes later he ran up on two mounted British officers who tried to cut him off, but Revere escaped when one of his pursuers bogged down in a clay pond. He then altered his route with a prudent detour to Medford. After awakening Medford’s militia captain, Revere pounded on to Lexington, shouting alarms at houses on the way. At Lexington, he had already warned John Hancock and Samuel Adams about their impending arrest when William Dawes galloped up. 

Dawes was late because he had a longer route and more trouble getting out of Boston. Like Paul Revere, he was a silversmith by trade and an active member of the Sons of Liberty, though the British judged him to be a drunken hothead. Some thought him a simpleton. That was because Billy Dawes was able to mimic inebriation with such élan that British sentries always chuckled and let Billy pass, unaware that beneath the act was a cold customer with steely nerves and a dangerous temper.  Even people who knew him were startled when he suddenly “sobered up” for any serious business at hand.

He was a young man — just a few days over 30 and 11 years younger than Revere when the two separately rode toward Lexington. Married to a stunning girl, Billy Dawes almost beat a British soldier to death for leering at her one afternoon. Another time, he had gotten into a fracas when trying to steal a cannon and had a cuff button driven into his wrist. The wound began to bother him, so he visited Dr. Warren who asked him how it had happened. Billy Dawes said nothing but leveled his gaze on the good doctor and smiled. That was the reason that on the night of April 18, when it really mattered, Warren had chosen Dawes to precede Paul Revere, but for once, the drunk act didn’t fool a sentry. By a stroke of luck, Billy recognized a soldier he had befriended, and the man let him through. 

At 1:00 AM, Revere and Dawes left Lexington for Concord and were surprised by a rider coming up from behind. They were relieved to discover that the stranger was young Samuel Prescott, a Concord physician who had been courting a girl in Lexington and was heading home. By chance, Prescott had stumbled on this great adventure, and he eagerly joined it. Like Revere in the Charles River’s shadows and Dawes finding a friendly soldier to let him pass, Prescott turning up was yet another stroke of luck, because he was the only one of them who would see Concord that night. The trio ran into a British patrol that promptly captured Revere. Dawes fled but was thrown from his horse, which galloped away. Only Prescott escaped to ride hard on Concord and rouse the militia there. They would be waiting at the bridge made famous when the British came later that morning. 

Nobody — not Revere, Dawes, Prescott, Hancock, Adams or even the British soldiers and their officers —  knew what might happen at the end of that long night of wild rides and daring escapes. There was no sense of inevitability, no premonition of something seismic waiting its time to occur and change the destinies of men and empires. A grenadier took Revere’s horse and, considering Revere more a bother than a prize, turned him loose in Lexington. There, Paul Revere set himself the task of spiriting John Hancock’s trunk out of the village. He was in an upstairs room when he heard the fifes and drums and saw from a window the redcoats wheeling into position on Lexington Commons. Facing them were ragtag boys and frowning men with fowling pieces and hunting muskets. Revere recognized the British commanding officer, Major John Pitcairn, a jovial Scot who was his neighbor in Boston.

Pitcairn was shouting orders at the Lexington militia to lay down their arms and disperse. Revere had hauled Hancock’s trunk downstairs when he heard a pistol snap and turned to see a ballooning cloud of smoke. The unmistakable flare of pan flashes and crackling muskets came from the British lines. Pitcairn had jerked his sword down, the signal to cease fire, but it hadn’t mattered. 

Their slogging march toward the unknown in a hostile country had come to this, something seismic after all, something to turn farmers into rebels, eventually revolutionaries, and change the destinies of men and empires. Two and a half centuries ago, it began on the night of April 18 and culminated the next day, a span of hours in which two minor skirmishes in two small villages wound up changing the world.