As early as 1776, the Comte de Vergennes, France’s foreign minister, convinced King Louis XVI to send munitions to America. They secretly sent military supplies not out of sympathy for the Revolution, but for reprisal against Britain for France’s defeat in the French and Indian War. Most of the Continental soldiers’ arms in the first year came from France through a fake supply company, in order to keep their support confidential. The Spanish government also added a donation and eventually established its own supply company.
When news of the victory at Saratoga reached France, it was celebrated as if it were a French victory. The Americans’ causes of freedom and liberty rang familiar with many in France who had been influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of Jean Jaqcues Rousseau and Baron de Montesquieu, two of the most forward-thinking leaders during the Enlightenment in France. In early 1778, the French and Americans signed two treaties. The first was a Treaty of Amity and Commerce that strengthened trade between France and America. The second, a Treaty of Alliance, contained several stipulations. First, if France entered the war, neither country would stop fighting until America won its independence. Second, neither France nor America could conclude peace with Britain without the consent of the other. And finally, both were responsible for guaranteeing the other’s possessions in America against all other powers.
The American people did not accept the French alliance with open arms. They were aware that they were allying themselves to a historical foe that was also a Roman Catholic power. Since some of the colonists had settled in America to escape religious persecution, this was a concern. However, while the Americans felt good about holding together the colonial forces to this point, they also clearly understood that in order to win the war, they were going to need some help.
In March 1778, the British Parliament passed a measure that granted all of the American demands prior to 1775. Both the Coercive Acts and the Tea Act would be repealed and Parliament would never tax the colonies, but these offers came too late. By summer 1778, the colonial war became a world war when British ships fired on French vessels. Also wanting to step out of the British shadow looming over Europe, Spain and Holland both entered the war against Britain in 1779, and the fighting continued to spread to the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean.
As the scope of the battle changed, British and American colonial forces regrouped. To this point, England blockaded the colonial coast, but now that the French had a powerful fleet in American waters the British decided to evacuate Philadelphia and concentrate their efforts in New York City.
Washington’s Continental Army spent the winter at Valley Forge. The army’s supply system began to collapse, and the men suffered through a winter of unrelenting cold, hunger, and disease. Many wanted to make Washington the scapegoat for the Patriots’ dilemma, but there was never a serious effort to replace him. As the winter wore on, Washington sent two of his generals on foraging expeditions. They confiscated cattle and livestock, telling the colonists they would be repaid by the Continental Congress. The troops gradually regained their strength, and Washington began a military training program, since very few had ever been part of a formal military unit. The soldiers who remained became a strong, professional fighting force.
In June 1778, Washington followed the British General Clinton as he evacuated the troops from Philadelphia. The Americans attacked the British at Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle was inconclusive, and the British escaped to New York, while Washington’s troops remained in the area. From that point forward, the British strategy changed. They concentrated their efforts in the south, where they felt they would gain the support of many Loyalists who only needed encouragement from their British brethren.
In 1779, the British forces overran Georgia. Then in the spring of 1780, they led a massive campaign against Charleston, South Carolina. When the city surrendered, more than 5,000 defenders were captured, the greatest single American loss of the war. Warfare intensified in the Carolinas, with guerrilla-style civil conflicts between Patriots and their Loyalist neighbors.
British General Cornwallis was close to having South Carolina under control, when two of this subordinates overreached themselves in an effort to subdue the Patriots. A band of militiamen trapped this group of redcoats at King’s Mountain and forced their surrender. Additionally, General Nathanael Greene, newly appointed by the Continental Congress to the southern theatre, distinguished himself in the Carolina campaign of 1781. He was a man of infinite patience and used a strategy of delay. By fighting and retreating, he allowed the British to follow his army, which both exhausted General Cornwallis’ troops and slowed the war. He lost some battles but won the campaign, eventually clearing most of Georgia and South Carolina of British troops. This was the turning point of the war in the south as colonial forces prolonged the British campaign and generated more support among the local populous as they retreated northward.
General Cornwallis retreated with his troops into Virginia awaiting supplies and reinforcements at Chesapeake Bay. There he joined forces with British General Benedict Arnold, who in 1780 had sold out to the British. Arnold had a grudge against General Washington over an official reprimand he received as commander of reoccupied Philadelphia. Arnold intended to tell the British the location of American’s West Point garrison, but the scheme was foiled when the British spy carrying the information was captured. Arnold fled and joined the British troops.
General Cornwallis established a base at Yorktown. He was not concerned about the possibility of a siege, since he thought the British navy controlled American waters and Washington’s troops were preoccupied with the British in New York. What Cornwallis did not know was that a French fleet in the West Indies under the command of Admiral de Grasse was on its way to join with American forces in a strike at Yorktown. In the summer of 1781, General Washington’s troops marched more than 300 miles south to Chesapeake from New York and met up with the French land forces commanded by Comte de Rochambeau. Washington and Rochambeau surrounded Cornwallis on land, while de Grasse battled the British fleet and won control of the Chesapeake, thus successfully blockading the British troops.
Cornwallis held out until October 19, 1781, when he surrendered his entire army of nearly 7,000 men. The surrender at Yorktown was as much a French conquest over the British as it was an American victory. Whatever small hopes of winning the war the British military still held were gone when Cornwallis surrendered. Still, King George III planned to continue the war, and fighting lasted for nearly a year after Yorktown.