The World Turned Upside Down
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The tale is as old as the American republic. On October 19, 1781, Lord Charles Cornwallis, Knight Companion of The Most Noble Order of the Garter, surrendered to George Washington and the American Continental Army. Defeated yet defiant, Cornwallis ordered the Red Coat band to accompany the proceedings with the tune �The World Turned Upside Down.� The choice was not accidental. It alluded the shocking events leading up to His Majesty�s troops� ignominious capitulation at the hands of upstart colonists, which seemed straight out of Macbeth where nature itself has gone awry. King George III, like his routed general, proved so dazed and confused by defeat at the hands of the Americans that for years after the Treaty of Paris he refused to allow his cabinet to speak the words: �the United States of America.� Had the world turned upside down?