<p><span class="deck">When the French Revolution broke out 200 years ago this month, Americans greeted it enthusiastically. After all, without the French, <span class="typestyle">we</span> could never have become free. But the cheers faded as the brutality of the convulsion emerged, and Americans realized that they were still only a feeble newborn facing a giant, intimidating world power. </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">When their side lost the Revolution, New Englanders who had backed Britain packed up, sailed north, and established the town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. It still flourishes.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">For years, people have argued that France had the <span class="typestyle"> real</span> revolution and that ours was mild by comparison. But now, a powerful new book argues that the American Revolution was the most sweeping in all history. It alone established a pure commercial culture that makes America the universal society we are today. </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The American Revolution was in fact a bitter civil war, and a remarkable book offers us perhaps the most intimate picture we have of what it was like for the ordinary people who got caught in its terrible machinery.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">CAPT. LOUIS FRAN’OIS BERTRAND DUPONT D’AUBEVOYE, COMTE DE LAUBERDIÈRE, served the patriot cause in the Revolution, did all he could to teach Virginians proper French manners, made love to the local women, and found every American inferior. Except for one.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The French helped us win our revolution. A few years later, we were at war with Napoleon’s navy. The two countries have been falling in and out of love ever since. Why?</span></p>
<p>Major Patrick Ferguson's instinct of chivalry spared the life of an American officer with “a remarkable large cocked hat” who was reconnoitering at Chadds Ford and came within range of British rifles.</p>
<p>America’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.</p>
<p>To explore the American Revolution through the eyes of John Singleton Copley is to see it with fresh eyes, to understand that it was a civil war with many shades of allegiance.</p>
<p>It's often portrayed as an orderly conflict between patriots, Tories, and British, but the American Revolution caused much suffering, dislocation, and economic decline, and had major effects on Native Americans and Spanish, French, Dutch, and other colonists worldwide.</p>
<p>The battle of Monmouth was pivotal in the struggle for independence, enabling George Washington to change the narrative of the war and eventually solidify his own role in our nation's history.</p>
<p><span><span><span><span><span>It became convenient to portray Benedict Arnold as a conniving traitor, but the truth is more complex. The brilliant general often failed to get credit for his military wins, suffered painful wounds, lost his fortune while others profiteered, and finally gave up on the disorganized and often ineffective efforts to win the American Revolution.</span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p>A team from <em>American Heritage</em> helped document some of the most important maps of the Revolution — still stored in the medieval English castle where scenes from <em>Harry Potter</em> were later filmed.</p>
