Finally, 2 days after the National Weather Service began scaring New Yorkers with predictions of a snowy Armageddon (“…as much as four inches … before it roars out of town with wind gusts of 40 mph“), Manhattan is enjoying a snowstorm. Pray God He sends enough of the stuff to bury the rats, the garbage and the politicians.
The beauty outside my window recalls the storm that hit Boston around this time in 1776 — but it was rain and heavy wind, not snow. The British Army had infested Beantown almost a year earlier; rebels against the Empire had chased them there after the soldiers’ attempts to disarm them at Lexington and Concord. The outraged colonists effectively turned Boston into a prisoner-of-war camp, besieging the Army inside. The inmates tried a jail-break in June, at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Technically, they won because they gained the hill. But that simply relocated the perimeter of their prison as the colonists moved their lines and resumed the siege.
By the following spring, the rebels were no longer wondering “How do we continue keeping them confined so they can’t roister about the countryside, stealing our guns ?” but “How do we expel these invaders, convincing them to leave our country and sail home?” (the same question so many peoples around the world ask today about American troops). And so they mounted cannon on a peninsula commanding Boston, working feverishly overnight. Dawn revealed their efforts to the Redcoats, but no matter: by then, the Patriots were aiming the barrels of ultima ratio regum squarely at them. The professionals boarded ship, preparing to fight regardless of the amateurs’ cannon — when rain and a fierce wind “deranged all the enemy’s plan of debarkation, driving the ships foul of each other, and from their anchors in utter confusion.” Instead of fighting, the Army evacuated.
What a triumph! Volunteers and idealists battling for liberty had defeated hired killers hoping to subjugate them to an Empire! Now, as Our Rulers try to disarm, bully, and tyrannize us, we can take courage and comfort from forbears determined to live free or die. (Read more about the siege of Boston in my novel, Halestorm).
11:03 am on March 8, 2013
