"What does rebel mean, anyway? Ive noticed that in English press its a bad word. Here its different, because we were the rebels in 1775 and proud of it. But see, people who know the American revolution think that the Brit policy against the Yankees, where (give or take a Banastre Tarlteton or two), the redcoats tried to avoid killing civvies, was normal Imperial policy.
Bullshit. The reason the Brits let us go, didnt try scorched-earth on us, was that we WERE Brits, as far as they could tell: white protestant English-speaking humans. If you werent all of the above, you werent human. The only other war where English troops had the same restraint wastake a guess. Right: the English Civil War. In England, they fought clean. But when Cromwell marched up to subdue the Scots, who were Protestant (good) but non-English (bad), a lot of POWs never made it back to the holding pens, and a lot of crofts were torched, and a lot of girls were raped. When he moved from Scotland to Ireland, where the filthy locals were filthy Papist as well as non-English, well, you dont want to know what happened there."
