He detailed for the enterprise William Howe, the officer destined soon to be his successor in the command at Boston.

Howe was a brave and experienced soldier.

He had been a friend of Wolfe and had led the party of twenty-four men who had first climbed the cliff at Quebec on the great day when Wolfe fell victorious.

He was the younger brother of that beloved Lord Howe who had fallen at Ticonderoga and to whose memory Massachusetts had reared a monument in Westminster Abbey.

Gage gave him in all some twenty-five hundred men, and, at about two in the afternoon, this force was landed at Charlestown.
The little town was soon aflame and the smoke helped to conceal Howe's movements.