As you watch the Patriot you see many of the battles fought during the American
revolution. You also see the uniforms they wore to battle, and the guns they used and
how they were used. But what you didn't see was the fact that the movie doesn't relate to
the American Revolution, in ways that I'm going to explain in the next paragraphs. It was
different because of the weapons they used, the way the slaves were being treated in the
movie compared to in the actual time, the way the battles were fought and where they
were, and the transportation they used.
In the movie there were scene's in which they were in a battle fighting and the
canon ball would come out of the canon and travel through the air at a fast speed hit the
ground a blow up. The canon balls did not blow up back then, they simply hit the ground
and took out whatever was in the way, because they were made from cast-iron.(The
history place.www.historyplace.com) And it also showed them having good accuracy, the
cannons only had one purpose taking out as many people as possible in one place, they
did not focus on accuracy when they made the cannon. That is why they had multiple
cannons set up behind the infantry men. The guns the used in the movie resembled, the
ones they used in the American Revolution, but oviously they were replica's. They
showed them reloading in under 5 seconds, it took 15 seconds if not more to reload. They
had to put the gunpowder in, put the tiny ball in, pack it down, all this would take more
then 5 seconds(Countryman 2002, 67). It also showed them making multiple shots out of
the same gun without reloading. This was not possible because, during that time the guns
weren't spring loaded they were based on gun power, and a tiny ball.
The Patriot Vs. The American Revolution
In the movie the Patriot, It showed the homeowner Mel Gibson owning a bunch
of slaves. It showed them plowing the fields, harvesting their crops,