00:01Every 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence is celebrated as the birth of the United States.
00:11But it wasn't the end of the war.
00:15America still had to beat the British on the battlefield.
00:21But the Americans didn't have enough arms and ammunition to win a war by themselves.
00:27So to get rid of one king, they turned for help to another, King Louis XVI of France.
00:37Within a week of signing the Declaration of Independence, the American revolutionaries sent a copy to the French monarch.
00:45The British were France's greatest enemy.
00:48In 1756, Britain and France had gone to war over territories in North America.
00:59This became known as the Seven Years' War.
01:01It was a battle for imperial supremacy.
01:06But the British came out on top.
01:10And the French weren't happy about it.
01:14France lost all of its Canadian colonies to Britain, as well as parts of the Caribbean.
01:21And all they had to show for their efforts was crippling debt.
01:24Imperial France saw the American War of Independence as the chance to get its revenge.
01:36In 1776, it began smuggling arms to support the patriot cause.
01:43Then in 1778, the French joined the United States as official allies.
01:48The main thing that changed was the introduction of the French Navy into the force.
01:55The British were always dependent upon their Navy to keep themselves supplied from London,
02:01to move troops around from place to place.
02:04And with the French Navy now on American shores, all of that was cut off.
02:09Britannia no longer ruled the waves.
02:10And for them, it changed completely the nature of the war.
02:15Do you think that America could have won without this help from France?
02:21No, absolutely not.
02:23America could never have won the war without France.
02:25This is not the story of the plucky little Americans with their muskets and their plows
02:30going out and having a go against the mighty evil British, is it?
02:33And it never was true and it was never a good fit.
02:35The Americans could never have brought themselves up by their own bootstraps.
02:41In fact, the real story of the American Revolution is that the United States became the centerpiece
02:48of an international coalition which together fought to achieve a common purpose,
02:55to defeat a common adversary.
