Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (Pulitzer Prize Winner). Illustrated , livre ebook

Esther Forbes
Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (Pulitzer Prize Winner). Illustrated
Esther Forbes' Paul Revere and the World He Lived In is a masterful blend of biography and historical narrative that brings Revolutionary-era America vividly to life. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1943, this classic work explores not only the life of the famed patriot Paul Revere, but also the social, political, and cultural environment that shaped him and the American Revolution.
Far more than a simple retelling of Revere’s famous midnight ride, the book presents him as a complex figure—a skilled silversmith, an ardent Son of Liberty, a shrewd businessman, and a man deeply woven into the fabric of colonial Boston. Through meticulous research and evocative prose, Forbes reconstructs the dynamic world of 18th-century New England, from the bustling streets of Boston to the growing unrest that would ignite a revolution.
What sets this biography apart is its focus on context: Forbes places Revere’s story within the larger currents of his time, introducing readers to the artisans, merchants, ministers, and radicals who together shaped early American identity. Her rich, humanistic portrayal gives depth not only to Revere himself but to the broader struggle for independence.
Written with literary elegance and historical precision, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In is both informative and immersive—a definitive portrait of one of America’s most iconic figures, and a window into the revolutionary world that forged a nation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I
I
II
III
Part II
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Part III
I
II
III
IV
V
Part IV
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
Part V
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Part VI
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
Part VII
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Part VIII
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Part IX
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Part X
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Publisher: Asimis Books © Ukraine - Kyiv 2025
ISBN: 978-617-8710-12-5
Part I
I



There had been week upon week of the cold grey fury of the North Atlantic, for it was midwinter when the little refugee, Apollos Rivoire, made his crossing. At such a season only the hardiest of passengers ventured much above deck. Bunks were dank, bread wormy, beef tainted, and many of these small sailing ships never made port, but at least the Atlantic was crossed in great company. God brooded upon the face of these waters. His hand parted the mountainous waves. He upheld the ship. Even if one drowned, it was by the Providence of God. Apollos did not drown. He entered Massachusetts Bay either late in 1715 or early in 1716.
Land at last! The first gull, the seaweed and the changing color of the sea. The smell of the littoral — that blue cloud on the horizon, which is not a cloud but the hills of Milton. And then the wizen passengers dared crawl on deck and gaze about them.
The ship nosed its way cautiously among the icy islands. On one of them masons were building the first lighthouse to be set up in the western world. There on Nix’s Mate rattled iron cages holding together bird-pecked skeletons of pirates. Apollos could hear the short happy bark of seals, the ferocious laughter of gulls. There was one more tortuous channel through dark islands.
No ship could enter Boston without first rounding the blunt brass cannon of Castle Island. Above her floated the flag of England. Governor’s Island was almost brimful with the sea. Beyond, Spectacle Island. Then farther on the Black Bird Island, where gulls and terns nested. Then for the first time a boy standing upon a deck could see the greatest port in all America — the famous prosperous town of Boston.
From where he stood it was apparent that Boston was almost an island, being attached to the mainland by a flimsy mile-long neck of mud-flats. Storm and high tide might pour across this weak isthmus and then for a few hours Boston was an island indeed. The promontory was made up of rough steep hills — three large ones and a number of small ones. The valleys were crowded by a jumble of roofs. Chimneys fluttered their tatters of smoke. Bristling steeples attested to the godliness of the inhabitants. The town looked much like any thriving North-European port except for one fact that must have been apparent even to a boy of thirteen. Boston was built almost entirely of wood.
An amphibious border skirted the town; a mass of piers, shipyards, stages for drying fish, distilleries, warehouses, wharves. The inner harbor was crowded with merchant ships, sloops and schooners, whalers, heel-tappers, ferries, lighters, fishing ketches. These Yankee sailors and merchants ‘carried’ not only for all North America, but for the West Indies and parts of Europe as well. Madagascar, Skanderoon, South America, already knew these smart ships. Boston, by nature some seven hundred acres and no larger than a large farm, was already badly crowded with fifteen thousand inhabitants. The town was beginning to bulge out over the waterfront. But if they needed more land they would make it (there were enough hills to cut down and throw into the sea). If they needed more freedom for their ships (England already had plenty of laws they disregarded), they would take that too. These Yankees had the reputation of hard-hitting, forceful, ingenious men. Already Boston was something more than a geographic fact — something of a state of mind. Now the solitary French boy was to become one of them.
Apollos Rivoire had left behind him the cruellest persecution the world up to his time had ever seen. After generations of religious terror, the Catholic France had decided to purge herself of her well-to-do, well-behaved Protestant minority. This boy was but one of four hundred thousand to leave France in the eighteenth and latter part of the seventeenth centuries. The exodus dragged on for almost a hundred years, which shows that, although France was a well-organized state for that time, it lacked the efficiency and thoroughness with which such things can be done today.
The Huguenots went to the Lowlands, to England, Switzerland, America. France had opened her own veins and spilt her best blood when she drained herself of her Huguenots, and everywhere, in every country that would receive them, this amazing strain acted as yeast — even upon Boston. Apollos was not the first of these French refugees to arrive in the Puritan metropolis. The Faneuils, Johonnotts, Sigourney, and Boudinois were already well-established and respected citizens. They fitted quickly into the Yankee pattern. The stories they could tell of persecution fanned the hatred the New Englanders already had for France and Catholicism. For generation after generation one of the ruling passions of the Boston people was their hatred and fear of their French Catholic neighbors — settled to their north, in Canada. And for generations the terrible French and Indian wars went on.
Apollos’ father and mother, Isaac and Serene, lived at Riucaucaud, not far from Bordeaux. This was the very heart of Huguenot France and here the persecutions had been the most ferocious. It is a mild and sunny land of vineyards, and to this day one great vineyard bears the name Rivoire. The family was ancient and numerous; some of them living in Martine, some in Sainte Foye La Grande as well as in Riucaucaud. The three villages are very close. Except for the vineyard and town records, the name is now extinct there, but a massive stone house owned by the Rivoires still stands.
The Rivoires were very well off for village people. ‘Apollos our son’ Isaac Rivoire recorded, ‘was born the thirtieth day of November 1702, about ten o’clock at night and was baptized at Riucaucaud, France. Apollos Rivoire my brother was his God Father and Anne Maulmon my sister-in-law was his God Mother. He set out for Guernsey the 21st of November 1715.’
As there was no legal marriage, no baptism, no church, for the Protestants of France at the time, such a baptism would take place secretly in considerable risk of the gallows if discovered. Louis XIV died the year Apollos left home. He boasted on his deathbed that he had ended Protestantism forever in France. Many (perhaps half of those among them) became ‘new Catholics’ but practised their faith in secret. If too tired or too wedded to their comfortable houses and beautiful vineyards to leave themselves, they often sent their children to other countries, beyond the reach of persecution.
Many old Huguenot names died out in their own country and their lands passed into other hands. This seems to have been the fate of the Rivoires of the Midi. But many years later Paul Revere’s ‘cousin’ Mathias writes him from Sainte Foye. There are only one or two Rivoires left. There were by 1780 more Reveres in Boston than Rivoires in the three villages.
Apollos was not the first exile from this family. His father’s younger brother Simon had been apprenticed to a surgeon and had ‘fled away with his master.’ The surgeon and the boy went first to Holland, but by 1705 Simon was settled in Guernsey. It was to this uncle Apollos was first sent. Riucaucaud is not far from Rochelle, the great port of exit for the émigré, nor is it a long sail from Rochelle to Guernsey. The boy could hardly have realized that this departure was to be as final as death itself.
It was Uncle Simon who furnished the boy with money and put him on this ship which now carried not merely one more child refugee, but the generations that would come after him, bearing his metamorphosed name to greater fame even as it died to extinction in its own land.
His great transatlantic ship (possibly as large as three hundred tons) approached Long Wharf, which ran for two thousand feet out into the harbor. It was an amazing piece of work. The largest vessels in the world could com