The French and American Revolutions Compared
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The Guillotine.
Dr. Guillotin’s machine in use during the French Revolution. Though he did not invent the machine, he proposed its use, and so it took his name. (Courtesy of CorbisBettmann.)
conflict, pitting Americans against Americans, but a military effort to
throw off the yoke of foreign oppression. ‘‘The American revolution,’’ he
concluded, ‘‘had more the appearance of a foreign than a civil war,’’ or
what we would today call a rebellion. Moreover, the war was limited primarily to military engagements between British and American militia.
There was no war against the general population, although many Americans lost their lives and property; and neither British nor American forces
engaged in wholesale acts of savage brutality, mayhem, and murder. ‘‘If
in America,’’ said Gentz, ‘‘single families and districts felt the heavy
hand of the revolution and of war, never at least, as in France, were confiscations, banishments, imprisonments, and death decreed in a mass.’’
Having driven the British from American soil, ‘‘the country proceeded
with rapid steps to a new, a happy, and a flourishing constitution’’ that
enjoyed popular support throughout the country. In retrospect, it could