e
result of the victory of the rebellious colonists in North
America, and their blasted republic."

Well, you can imagine, that gave me a start. All the world knows
that the American Patriots lost their war for independence from
England; that their army was shattered, that their leaders were
either killed or driven into exile. How many times, when I was a
little boy, did I not sit up long past my bedtime, when old
Baron von Steuben was a guest at Tarlburg-Schloss, listening
open-mouthed and wide-eyed to his stories of that gallant lost
struggle! How I used to shiver at his tales of the terrible
winter camp, or thrill at the battles, or weep as he told how he
held the dying Washington in his arms, and listened to his noble
last words, at the Battle of Doylestown! And here, this man was
telling me that the Patriots had really won, and set up the
republic for which they had fought! I had been prepared for some
of what Hartenstein had called unrealistic beliefs, but nothing
as fantastic as this.

"I can cut it even finer than that," Bathurst continued. "It was
the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga. We made a good bargain when
we got Benedict Arnold to turn his coat, but we didn't do it soon
enough. If he hadn't been on the field that day, Burgoyne would
have gone through Gates' army like a hot knife through butter."

But Arnold hadn't been at Saratoga. I know; I have read much of
the American War. Arnold was shot dead on New Year's Day of 1776,
during the storming of Quebec. And Burgoyne had done just as
Bathurst had said; he had gone through Gates like a knife, and
down the Hudson to join Howe.

"But, _Herr_ Bathurst," I asked, "how could that affect the
situation in Europe? America is thousands of miles away, across
the ocean."

"Ideas can cross oceans quicker than armies. When Louis XVI
decided to come to the aid of the Americans, he doomed himself
and his regime. A successful resistance to royal authority in
America was all the French Republicans needed to inspire them. Of
course, we have Louis's own weakness to blame, too. If he'd given
those rascals a whiff of grapeshot, when the mob tried to storm
Versailles in 1790, there'd have been no French Revolution."

But he had. When Louis XVI ordered the howitzers turned on the
mob at Versailles, and then sent the dragoons to ride down the
survivors, the Republican movement had been broken. That had been
when Cardinal Talleyrand, who was then merely Bishop of Autun,