seem a tempting
opportunity for revenge; but suppose that the colonial resistance
collapsed before effective aid could arrive? Suppose the colonists
merely used the threat of French intervention to extort terms from
England and then made common cause against the foreigner? These obvious
considerations made the French statesmen hesitate. Aid was indeed given
to the colonial rebels, especially in the very valuable form of arms and
munitions, but it was given secretly and unofficially, with the satirist
Beaumarchais, clever, daring, unscrupulous and ready to push his damaged
fortunes in any fashion, as unaccredited go-between. But in the matter
of open alliance with the rebels against the British Government France
temporized, nor could the utmost efforts of Franklin and his colleagues
extort a decision.

Saratoga extorted it. On the one hand it removed a principal cause of
hesitation. After such a success it was unlikely that the colonists
would tamely surrender. On the other it made it necessary to take
immediate action. Lord North's attitude showed clearly that the British
Government was ready to make terms with the colonists. It was clearly in
the interests of France that those terms should be refused. She must
venture something to make sure of such a refusal. With little hesitation
the advisers of the French Crown determined to take the plunge. They
acknowledged the revolted colonies as independent States, and entered
into a defensive alliance with these States against Great Britain. That
recognition and alliance immediately determined the issue of the war.
What would have happened if it had been withheld cannot be certainly
determined. It seems not unlikely that the war would have ended as the
South African War ended, in large surrenders of the substance of
Imperial power in return for a theoretic acknowledgment of its
authority. But all this is speculative. The practical fact is that
England found herself, in the middle of a laborious, and so far on the
whole unsuccessful, effort to crush the rebellion of her colonies,
confronted by a war with France, which, through the close alliance then
existing between the two Bourbon monarchies, soon became a war with both
France and Spain. This change converted the task of subjugation from a
difficult but practicable one, given sufficient time and determination,
to one fundamentally impossible.

Yet, so far as the actual military situation was concerned, there were
no darker