While the major fighting of the Revolutionary War moves to the South in the summer of 1779, a British force of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry, backed by three sloops-of-war, sails to the fogbound coast of New England. In response, Massachusetts sends a fleet of more than forty vessels and some one thousand infantrymen to “captivate, kill or destroy” the foreign invaders. But ineptitude and irresolution lead to a mortifying defeat—and have stunning repercussions for two men on opposite sides: an untested young Scottish lieutenant named John Moore and a Boston silversmith and patriot named Paul Revere.

Inimitably told in Cornwell’s thrilling narrative style, The Fort is the extraordinary novel of this fascinating clash between a superpower and a nation in the making.