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the infamous poem Paul Revere’s Ride (“Listen my children and you shall hear…”). Early battles at Lexington and Concord (the shot heard ’round the world) were followed by the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was really fought on Breed’s Hill. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and battles followed across what are now the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. George Washington, the American commander-in-chief, led troops across the Delaware River to mount an attack upon the British and Hessian troops. This success at the Battle of Trenton (1776) marked the turning point of the war. France, Spain, and Holland all sided with the Americans—the Dutch gained control of the English Channel and threatened to invade Britain. Britain finally acknowledged American independence by the Treaty of Paris (1783).

☞ 1789: FRENCH REVOLUTION

The French finally had enough of the Bourbon kings and overthrew them, storming the state prison, the Bastille, on July 14, mobbing the palace of Versailles and eventually beheading King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette. The revolutionaries proclaimed a republic, but the moderate Girondins were ousted by the more extreme Jacobins. Power passed to the hands of the Committee of Public Safety (one of those names that you can just tell is going to lead to trouble). Georges Danton, initially one of the most important members of the committee, was superceded by a lawyer named Maximilien Robespierre, and the ensuing Reign of Terror saw the execution of thousands of alleged antirevolutionaries. Perhaps inevitably, Danton and Robespierre both also ended up on the guillotine.

☞ 1792-1815: NAPOLEONIC WARS

Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and was in charge of the French army fighting the Austrians in Italy by 1796. Next he decided to break down the British Empire by conquering Egypt. Defeated by the British admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile (1799), he returned to France, overthrew the Executive Directory (the post-revolutionary government), became consul and then emperor in 1804—and he was 35 years old. The following year, he was again defeated by Nelson (at Trafalgar, where Nelson was killed) but did better on land, winning victories at Austerlitz, Jena-Averstedt, and Friedland and more or less conquering continental Europe. The British Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, defeated him in the Iberian Peninsula—a subsection of the Napoleonic wars known as the Peninsular War (1808-14), in the course of which Napoleon also found time to march on Moscow, losing about 400,000 of his 500,000-strong army in the harsh Russian winter. He was defeated again at Leipzig in 1813, forced to abdicate, and exiled to Elba, an island off the coast of Italy. He escaped, resumed power for the “Hundred Days,” and was finally defeated in 1815 at the battle of Waterloo, and exiled again, this time to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821.

☞ 1812-15: THE WAR OF 1812

Contrary to its name, this war lasted almost three years. The British were invading American ships and putting its sailors into servitude. And a British sea blockade on France during the Napoleonic Wars made trade difficult (although New England opposed the war and was trading with Britain and Canada). The British also didn’t appreciate that forces within the United States were moving into the Northwest Territories and the Canadian border. However, British and Mohawk forces stood ready for a U.S. advance and many American soldiers were taken prisoner at the Battle of Beaver Dams. This war ended with the conclusion of the Napoleonic War when the British fleet pulled out of its blockade, and the Treaty of Ghent took effect in 1815. Since, technically, the United States was not defeated (although it took a beating), the war was considered a stalemate, with both sides going back to their corners and calling it a day. The United States considered the war a confirmation of its independence because they stuck together, once again, and fought