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The Battle of Bunker Hill followed. Each force engaged lost one-third of its numbers, but the aggregate of the British loss was more than double that of the Colonies. It made a plain issue between the Colonists and the British army, and was no longer a controversy of citizens with the civil authority. The impatience of the two armies to have a fight had been gratified, and when Franklin was advised of the facts, and of the nerve with which so small a detachment of American militia had faced and almost vanquished three times their number of British veterans, he exclaimed, “The King has lost his Colonies.”

Many of the officers who bore part in that determining action gained new laurels in later years. Prescott, who led his thousand men to that achievement, served with no less gallantry in New York. Stark, so plucky and persistent along the Mystic river, was afterwards as brave and dashing at Trenton, Bennington, and Springfield. And Seth Warner, a volunteer at Bunker Hill, and comrade of Allen in the capture of Ticonderoga, participated in the battles of Hubbardton and Bennington, and the Saratoga campaign, during the invasion of Burgoyne in 1777.