"Throw Down Your Arms!"

That was a command that was given by an army officer 243 years ago.

It wasn't obeyed.

The war was on. It would last for eight years, ending in a series of treaties in Paris.

All most all of the major European powers used the Revolutionary War as a pretext to go to war against somebody else. In some ways, the war might be viewed as a continuation, or appendix, to the Seven Years War. If historians were agreeable to a bit of renaming, the Seven Years War might be renamed the First World War.