One morning in August, redcoats fanned out across the province, taking entire families into custody, burning farms and crops, and killing livestock.Ā Falling in the middle of two centuries of intermittent warfare, this grand derangement, or great upheaval, didnāt take place in Boston or even in Massachusetts.Ā But Boston bore responsibility for the acts carried out in its name, and Boston would host the āFrench Neutrals,ā the human byproducts of the purge that we remember as the expulsion of the Acadians who were confined in our city for nearly a decade.