overview

Overview

Members of the imaginary revolutionary organization called the Brothers of Liberty were inspired by the very real revolutions that took place in America and France during the second half of the 1700’s. The details of these revolutions happened as described here. The words of the French and American revolutionary leaders - from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine to Maximilien de Robespierre - are well documented. The American colonies disavowed English rule and successfully established the modern world’s first great democracy. The French Revolution was somewhat less successful. The French tried at first to establish a democracy, but their revolution disintegrated into a bloodbath of terror. The executions of France’s king and queen were only the first of many, and the attempted democracy lapsed into a military dictatorship under a man who came to call himself Emperor Napoleon. Napoleon delayed but could not prevent the independence of Saint Domingue, which became the independent country of Haiti in 1804.