ABSTRACT
The regiment in which young Le Noir had inlisted was one of those that were sent by the perfidious court of France to assist the American insurgents against their mother-country. 3 During the voyage he was encouraged / by his comrades to extend his notions of equality beyond the narrow limits of private property. The French officers were emancipated by the service in which they were now engaged, from the necessity of making royal authority the sole subject of their political conversation; and instead of being, as in former wars, employed to extend the power of their Grand Monarque 4 over a stubborn race of, what they called, insular republicans, considering themselves now as champions of universal liberty, all the doctrines of equality and freedom which had been so generally disseminated over France by the numerous philosophers of the school of Voltaire and Rousseau 5 / were impressed in full force on their eager and frivolous imaginations. As in every situation of life mankind are always ready to imitate their superiors, the soldiers soon caught the spirit of their officers, and as they had more to hope from a change of situation than their commanders, that spirit did not lose force in the transfusion.
