Explanation: The Prussian military officer Friedrich Wilhelm Von Steuben was an instrumental part of the victory of the American Revolution. Fleeing Europe on sodomy charges (with the assistance of Ben Franklin, who puffed up Von Steuben's credentials a little to Congress), he arrived at Valley Forge to find a freezing, demoralized, untrained Continental Army that was totally unready to fight a modern war. As the only person in the whole goddamn Continental Army with a hint of professional training, he was tasked with whipping the Continentals into shape - and whip them into shape he did!
One facet noted of this was that Von Steuben initially spoke almost no English - but the first English words he learned were profanity, so that he could curse at the troops in three languages (already knowing French and German) when they fucked up. The troops actually loved that - not for the rebuke, but because it let them know he was a 'rough', soldierly fellow, not some aristocrat with military rank as a sinecure. The drill manual he wrote (over the course of a week, then translated into English by an aide) would remain immensely influential on the American military for decades to come. Because of his drilling, the Continental Army, despite the mythology around the American 'minuteman', would become the most useful force of the American Revolution, able to stand toe-to-toe against professional British redcoats.
Von Steuben appeared to have embraced the republican ethos of the American Revolution wholeheartedly - he became an enemy of noble privilege and plutocracy, writing scathing attacks against oligarchy in state governments. He retired to a nice house in New York, attended Washington's inauguration, and left much of his estate to his two (ahem ahem) 'adopted sons' who were both officers he met during the American Revolution.
