The American Revolution from a British POV

[Ricky B]

I don't believe the French involvement won the war, but it definitely shortened it by years. The fighting up until Yorktown had already shown that the British were unable to control the countryside or even all the major cities and ports, and without doing that the war would have probably continued for many more years until the British got tired of trying to control things.

An effective and legitimate offer to settle the differences between the American colonists and the British king might have led to a settlement short of independence, but that doesn't seem to have been a likely situation from anything I have ever seen or heard once independence had been declared.

Rick