A little after 10 p.m. on the night of April 18, 1775, the Patriots’ best express rider, Paul Revere, set out from Boston by rowboat, then horseback, to warn the countryside that Royal soldiers were marching toward the towns of Lexington and Concord. By dawn on April 19, those soldiers, the Regulars, had reached Lexington, where they met resistance from provincial forces. The battles of the American Revolution had begun.