The Fading Mirage of Revolution: The French Expeditionary Force's Disillusionment with America.

The article considers the attitudes of the Expédition Particulière, the French Expeditionary Force to North America, during the American Revolution between 1780 and 1782, comparing accounts of the forces winter stay in Newport, Rhode Island in the winter of 1780-1781 to the following winter when they were stationed at Williamsburg, Virginia. While the New England port was deemed cosmopolitan with international trade, the society of Virginia was stratified with self-serving planters who embraced a slave-system with civil unrest among commoners caused by the war. Topics include the Enlightenment, shifts in 18th-century public opinion of the U.S. held by France, and the influence of polymath Benjamin Franklin as an American diplomat in France.