Comments by "Voix de la raison" (@voixdelaraison593) on "Ingraham: This isn't the news business, it's an extension of the DNC" video.
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@JeffBrody-w5j Great ideas can wither and die without the capital to support them. And from the earliest days, America’s uprising depended on French willingness to provide open-ended credit that enabled Deane and his partners to ship supplies to the beleaguered revolutionary forces. Ultimately, France provided about 1.3 billion livres of desperately-needed money and goods to support the rebels. Estimates suggest that at the colonists’ October 1777 victory at Saratoga, a turning point in the war, 90 percent of all American troops carried French arms, and they were completely dependent on French gunpowder.
That triumph prompted the French to open their coffers wider. Once the relationship was formalized in twin agreements early in 1778 (the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce), the flow of supplies soared, along with the numbers of soldiers and sailors crossing the Atlantic to fight for the American cause.
Roughly 12,000 French soldiers served the rebellion, along with some 22,000 naval personnel, aboard 63 warships. Lafayette was the one of the earliest—and most prominent —officers to join. The comte de Rochambeau, commander in chief of all French forces, played a crucial role in containing the English fleet and in the final campaigns. The comte de Grasse reinforced revolutionary forces in Virginia with French troops from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the Caribbean, then dealt Britain’s navy a decisive defeat at the 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake. It would be an army led by Washington, Lafayette and Rochambeau together that struck the decisive blow at Yorktown.
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@JeffBrody-w5j During American independence celebrations, it is easy to forget the extent of French involvement in the revolutionary struggle and particularly the Battle of Yorktown. The French played an indispensable role in helping the United States gain its independence in three key areas. First, French loans, clothing, gunpowder, muskets, cannons, and provisions supplied and sustained the American Continental Army especially during its most desperate moments. Second, the United States would not have been able to win at Yorktown without French land forces led by the Comte de Rochambeau and, critically, the French fleet led by Admiral De Grasse, which eliminated any hope of British reinforcements, supplies or escape. And finally, the French military engaged the British in many other geographical arenas, most-notably the Caribbean, which diverted British resources from North America and turned the American Revolution into so costly a global war that many British politicians refused to continue it. The French contribution to American independence was therefore of great significance.
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