How the French Won the American Revolution

[HeroHire]

I’ve often seen people trash talk the French. They don’t know or appreciate that if it weren’t for the French we wouldn’t have a country.

[andrefalksmen]

If one has ever read "Expectations on the French Revolution" by Lord Acton, it is ironic how much the choice of the French to the assist the Americans aggravated their internal dysfunction and accelerated their revolution. Although, if you read the essay, you'll find it well documented that expectation of the Revolution went back as far as the late 1690.

[theraven]

I’ve also read that there were more French troops at the Battle of Yorktown that American troops.

[captainsensiblejr.]

The reason American won the Revolutionary war was they they sent remarkably astute diplomats to Europe to make alliances.
At one point the British were fighting the Dutch, the American rebels and the French, as an alliance. The Spanish then declared war in Florida to exploit how thinly stretched British military resources were. Not only was the British navy supplying their forces in North America, but they were also defending their interests in Europe, India, China, blockading the Dutch and French coasts and protecting vulnerable British trade convoys. The British were too thinly spread to ensure they could focus all their naval forces on the Eastern coast of North America, and transport all their land forces across the Atlantic.

[dougburt]

Yes, I too believe that this naval battle is often overlooked. Thank you

[alastairbarkley]

The French ARE fighters. In WW1, the French did more - fielded more, lost more, provided more - than any other Allied country in order to defeat Germany. France and Germany also fought a series of terrible battles at Verdun - described as 'the bloodiest battle in human history.

[RCAvhstape]

The French also sent volunteer officers, weapons and money to aid the American rebel cause. Ben Franklin was essential as ambassador to France to make this happen. The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the Continental Army's greatest leaders, Washington loved him, and he took a bullet for America at the Battle of Brandywine Creek while leading from the front.

[jeffdege]

The French fleet was critical in not allowing Cornwallis to evacuate. And it was the Continental Army and the French Army that together forced Cornwallis to surrender.
But it wasn't the French Army, nor the French Fleet, nor was it the Continental Army, that had Cornwallis isolated in Yorktown, desperate for evacuation.

It was the local militias of the Carolinas that had Cornwallis' troops on the verge of starvation. Not by defeating them in the field, but by making it impossible for the Brits to forrage.

[REBELSCL]

I think Cowpens may have had a little bit to do with it…..

[alizardnamedyo-yo]

I'm not gonna say the revolution would have been impossible without the French, but it would have been far more difficult and bloody.

[carrickrichards]

Again a key moment of history that deserves to be remembered. Thank you

[carlanderson]

A good book that about this is In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown. by Nathaniel Philbrick. It covers a lot of Naval aspects of the Revolutionary war, including how the Hurricane Season governed naval deployments of both the UK and French . The Great Hurricane of 1780 severely weakened the British Fleet.

[dathit]

Is funny, because the French did way less war effort than the Spanish for the American cause. Spain was the main provider of powder and weapons for the revolutionary troops, had the biggest fleets to fight the british all around, losing more than 64 warships fighting the brits and stopping the main British reinforcemente convoys, like the one from August 9, 1780 action, which was a disaster for the British, and after the battle of Pensacola, a huge amount of British war effort was stopped, even after all this, it seems only the French helped and the Spanish are never mentioned.

[EmperorMaximus]

The French fleet WAS there with official permission but for only a short time to avoid hurricane season.

[alastairbarkley]

The French should be cut some slack over WW2. Apathy and division reflected a titanic long term struggle between the political Left and the military Right - something that could easily happen in the US today. Nobody defeated France in 1940, France did that to herself.

[robertjensen]

Hens were often used in the Revolutionary War to identify colonists who were loyal to the Crown.
You never learned about chicken-catch-a-Tory?

[jeffreygraf]

My 4th Great Grandfather was a sailor on the French ship 'Le Blanche' in De Grasse's fleet. He was then put ashore with many of his shipmates and fought as infantry at Yorktown. He was wounded, left behind when the French fleet moved on, recovered, and married a Virginia girl. And here I am.

[raymondcaylor]

My fifth maternal Grandfather Joseph Lane was at Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown. I was honored in 2014 to read his pension application at his SAR Grave dedication.

[phillipbradshaw]

The "American Revolution" was but a small theater in what could be called the actual first world war in which the real prize was India, not the north American colonies. and by that measure, the brits won the first world war against the French and the Spanish.

[dbyers]

A French army under Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau provided half the troops at the siege of Yorktown in 1781. The Spanish Navy, also allied to the US, promised to protect the French West Indies & French merchant shipping from the British enabling De Grasse to sail for the Chesapeake.