Portal:American Revolutionary War/Selected event/6

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The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. The battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in the mainland of British North America.

About 700 British Army regulars were ordered to capture and destroy military supplies that were reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. The first shots were fired just as the sun was rising at Lexington. The militia were outnumbered and fell back. Other colonists, hours later at the North Bridge in Concord, fought and defeated three companies of the king's troops. Outnumbered, soldiers of the British Army fell back from the Minutemen after a pitched battle in open territory. More Minutemen arrived soon thereafter and inflicted heavy damage on the British regulars as they marched back towards Boston.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his Concord Hymn described the first shot fired by the Patriots at the North Bridge as the "shot heard 'round the world".