Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 > Status Update

Now back across the Atlantic to London, where armchair generals are plotting how to subdue those rowdy colonials and put them back in their place, easy-peasy.

Valley Forge -- one of the few events of the War of Independence lying between the events leading up to the Declaration of Independence on one end, and the Battle of Yorktown on the other, which we actually learn enough about in school to have it stick to our memories.

The toll of battle upon civilians in the area.

Reminder of just how small fighting ships were back in those days -- the Hudson was the site of some pitched battles between vessels that carried significant numbers of guns for the time. Today we think of sea battles as vast things -- but that's the legacy of the development of naval aviation, and attack planes that can strike hundreds or even thousands of miles from their carriers.

I'd heard about Benedict Arnold's leg wound, but I hadn't realized how serious it was -- or how nasty he was while recovering. Hindsight is 20/20 vision -- but I wonder how much was pain, and how much was a fundamental flaw in his moral character that would lead to his decision to betray the Patriot cause, making his name infamous for over two centuries to young history students in the US.

Desperate shortages in the Continental Army, to the point the commissaries are hunting down scraps of paper to make cartridges.

Efforts to block British advances up the Hudson from New York, ranging from the absurd (trying to roll boulders into it, not understanding just how deep the river was) to the technically over-ambitious (a giant chain that broke repeatedly in the process of transporting it).

The earliest rifles -- more accurate (and thus of great value to snipers), but requiring longer to reload (and thus a liability in a stand-up battle, in which being able to send a lot of lead downrange was paramount).

The Battle of Saratoga. The redcoats' struggles to present desertion and maintain discipline.

The financial side of the Revolutionary War -- not glamorous like the speeches or the Signing of the Declaration of Independence, but vital for making the new United States' independence stick.