A Cross Roads woman whose husband's French-Canadian ancestors were thrown off their land by British soldiers has countered criticism of new movie The Patriot.

Elizabeth Caissie believes the British "Redcoats" of the 18th century were responsible for the sort of atrocities depicted in the film.

The Patriot, which stars Mel Gibson, tells how colonists rose up against their British overlords during the American War of Independence.

A national newspaper led an attack on the film last week in an article that claimed the British soldiers were unfairly branded as child murderers, sadists, snobs and moral cowards.

Writer Peter Hitchens branded the film a "sump of sentimentality strung together with lies" and "pure fiction of an unusually nasty and slanted type".

But local historian Mrs Caissie, of The Old Schoolhouse, says her late husband David's family history shows that the Redcoats were guilty of such crimes.

She says: "The British have done some very good things in the world but they're not blameless. We've not always carried on in a gentlemanly fashion. We went to Canada to claim someone else's land. We killed them and deported them, and we separated families while doing so.

"We murdered anyone and everyone in sight because we wanted the land."

Mr Caissie was born in Ontario and in 1966 travelled to England where he met Elizabeth. He remained in the UK until his death in 1998.

Among Mr Caissie's direct ancestors were Roger Caissie, one of the original French settlers in what later became Canada, and Grand Joss Caissie.

Joss and his wife fled into the forests after the British rounded up thousands of his fellow townsfolk and shipped them to Louisiana.

Grand Joss spent several years hiding with Indians in the forests, but his brother was among those who was separated from his family.

The settlers, known as Acadians, were displaced in the mid-1700s when the British and French fought a war over ownership of North America.

The unrest continued for several more years until the American War of Independence, which involved many of the same British soldiers.

One of the descendants of Joss's brother, US Air Force officer Edmond Rogers, met Mrs Caissie for the first time last month when he visited Keighley.

Mrs Caissie points out that The Patriot makes no secret of portraying history from the point of view of the Americans.

"People have got to be objective," she says. "We see history from one point of view but there's another point of view. I've seen from the other side through my family."