"Larry Blanchard" wrote in message ...

Also happens with people taking the side of the rebels in 1776.

Ain't that the truth! I remember reading somewhere that most of the
population during the revolution didn't give a hoot which side won. That
seems to be true of most, if not all, revolutions.

Civil wars, OTOH ...

A revolution is what the winning side calls a civil war provided they were
the rebels. Some in the south tried to depict the U.S. Civil War as the
second American revolution (in the expectation of winning), but since they
lost it remained a civil war.

If memory serves only about a third of the colonists actively supported the
rebellion at first, another third were effectively neutral, and the final
third supported the crown. Those numbers shifted later of course.