When the French Revolution broke out two hundred years ago this month, Americans greeted it enthusiastically. After all, without the French we could never have become free. But the cheers faded as the brutality of the convulsion emerged—and we saw we were still only a feeble newborn facing a giant, intimidating world power.
and how, a decade after the Revolution, a melodramatic rescue attempt, involving a grateful young American, went awry
Refugees from the French Revolution, many of them of noble birth, built a unique community in the backwoods of Pennsylvania—and hoped their queen would join them
Washington was his idol, but he could not apply his American ideals to a France sliding into the Terror