Reel History 3.5: Daniel Day-Lewis, American hero (also something about taxes)

 The Patriot (more to come Thursday or Friday), but I also watched The Last of the Mohicans to fill the oh-so-large gap between The Crucible and the American Revolution. I don't want to talk too much about the events of Mohicans, though it is an excellent movie and I daresay much better than The Patriot. But some of the events of Mohicans, or at least the larger context of the movie and the book by James Fenimore Cooper (which I didn't read but I've heard it's no good anyway), serve as a pretext for the events of the American Revolution, so here's a quick rundown:
So I watched

The Seven Years' War (also known as the French and Indian War to them Yanks, or the Anglo-French Rivalry if you're so inclined), the war featured in Mohicans, was all finished in 1763, and most Canadians know it as the last hurrah for the French Empire in North America and the start of a beautiful friendship between Quebec and English-speaking Canada for years to come (or something). But following the defeat of the French, the British found themselves in a tight spot. The war has nearly doubled their national debt, as wars are wont to do, and the decided solution was to tax the heck out of the Thirteen Colonies. This was, of course, met with resistance (no taxation without representation and all that) and the military was called to enforce such laws, and this enforcement culminates with the American Revolution.

The Seven Years' War was where military leaders like George Washington cut their wooden teeth* leading militias in battle. It's also where the hero of The Patriot, Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), learned to fight like some sort of crazy invincible warrior man. Maybe him and Nathaniel Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans (played by Daniel Day-Lewis, a true American hero**) fought side by side. Probably not, but I think that would make a good movie.


*George Washington did not have wooden teeth, they were made of hippo bone and ivory.

**Daniel Day-Lewis, while playing many Americans over the years and showing up many times in this blog series, is an English actor, one of the greatest of all time. But hey, Mel Gibson is Australian and he got to be called the Patriot.