I was thinking about how the American and French Revolutions are sometimes seen, especially by Marxists, as more ‘successful’ versions of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth.

Nowadays, whenever people suggest even mild leftwing ideas, someone pops up and says ‘Sure if you want to end up with STALINISM’ so, I was wondering if people said the same thing about Cromwell and the Roundheads before the American Revolution? Like, ‘If we get rid of the British, next thing you know they’ll be cancelling CHRISTMAS!’

The parallels between Cromwell and Washington are pretty obvious: ‘successful revolutionary general defeats the monarch’s forces in a war that started as a dispute about tax, then becomes the new head of state’ applies to both. Did people at the time see the comparison or were the two men and the two conflicts seen as very different?