The Rise and Fall of a French Royalist Settlement in Upper Canada After the 1789 Revolution

Commentary A great mistake people make about the French Revolution is that it had something to do with liberty. Seen in the proper perspective, its high-flown rhetoric presaged the era of genocide and mass warfare that culminated in the Bolshevik coup of 1917, Hitler’s subsequent rise to power, and Mao Zedong’s takeover of China in 1949, encompassing the century’s most terrible persecutions and wars. The tyrants of 1789–94, after imprisoning and murdering thousands of innocents on the basis of their class, religion, dissent, and regional character, drove thousands of refugees to flee to neighbouring countries. The majority found safety and succour in England, at a time when a superb parliamentary aristocracy was nearing its peak. And of the émigrés who fled, some even made it to Canada, where they tried to establish a Royalist colony....