Siege of Boston, 1775–1776

After the fighting at Lexington and Concord, New England militia surrounded British forces in Boston. The siege included the Battle of Bunker Hill, artillery exchanges, supply shortages and an extended struggle over the approaches to the town.

Henry Knox’s transport of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga allowed the Patriots to fortify Dorchester Heights in March 1776. The British evacuated Boston on 17 March, ending the first major campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Rebellion 1776 opens during the bombardment immediately before the evacuation. Elsbeth experiences the siege not as a sequence of generals and manoeuvres but as noise, missing relatives, political suspicion and a disrupted labour market.