Yep, a sort of couvée, required labor of free (depending on your definition) civilians, usually done under religious auspices. At least that's the current cover story.
But it was aliens.
Paul Revere never yelled, "The British are coming!" ...Paul Revere needed to keep his knowledge of the Brits' arrival on the down-low. British troops had already camped out across the Massachusetts countryside...
Well, sort of - they were patrolling and in fact, one of their patrols captured Revere, took his horse, and let him go on foot. Those were largely troops that had been there for awhile and had achieved a modus vivendi with the fractious Colonials. What changed was that the new ones in town didn't recognize this arrangement and ended up firing live ammunition at Parker and his men at Lexington Green, to the latter's astonishment. What Revere was yelling - and of course he was yelling, he was utilizing the alerting mechanism that had been in use during the French and Indian Wars - was "the Regulars are coming!" The new kids in town were taking the thing to another level. Revere had boasted to his captors that they'd raise 500 men before the British reached Concord. By the time it was over it was more like 2500.
And she needs to learn what the expression “on the down-low” means.
The real alert was spread by Paul Revere’s co-rider, Israel Bissell, who actually didn’t get intercepted and completed his circuit alerting the colonists. Revere got a total of less than thirteen miles before his ride got interrupted, but Bissell notified everyone he was supposed to in a ride lasting more than four days covering 345 miles! But as Robert Wuhl noted “the Midnight Ride of Israel Bissell” just isn’t as poetic as “the midnight ride of Paul Revere. . .”