The War of Independence, 1775–83
Why ‘Washington Won the War’ Is Not the Whole Story
When most students reach for an answer to ‘why did America win?’ they reach for George Washington. He matters — but the spec asks for four factors, not one: Washington’s leadership, British mistakes, French involvement and Spanish involvement. The decisive shift came in October 1777, when an American victory at Saratoga turned a colonial rebellion into a global war that Britain could not win on three oceans at once. Top-band answers weigh these factors against each other and reach a substantiated judgement, rather than ranking Washington first by default.
The specification names four factors in American victory: Washington’s leadership, British mistakes, French involvement, and Spanish involvement. A balanced answer weighs all four; reducing the war to Washington alone caps the answer in the lower bands.
Why Britain Expected a Quick War
In 1775 most ministers in London expected to crush the rebellion in a single campaigning season. Britain had the world’s largest navy, a professional army, and the financial resources of an empire. The colonies had no navy, no national treasury, no manufacturing base for muskets and powder, and a population of 2.5 million against Britain’s 8 million. Yet by 1781 Britain had lost. Three problems explain why. First, the strategic geography — armies that landed at New York or Charleston had to march hundreds of miles inland through forested country with no roads, while supplies came across an ocean three thousand miles wide. Second, British commanders frequently failed to coordinate; the early plan for 1777 collapsed when General Howe sailed for Philadelphia instead of moving up the Hudson to support General Burgoyne. Third, the Continental Army did not have to win battles; it only had to stay in the field long enough for British public patience to run out.
Saratoga, October 1777 — The Turning Point
The British plan for 1777 had General Burgoyne march south from Canada, General Howe move north up the Hudson and a third force come east from Lake Ontario, meeting at Albany to cut New England off from the other colonies. The plan unravelled. Howe took his army to Philadelphia. The third force gave up its siege of Fort Stanwix and turned back. Burgoyne pushed on alone through the Adirondack forest, slowed by his baggage train and harassed by militia. At Saratoga in upstate New York he was surrounded by an American force under Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. After two battles in September and October 1777, Burgoyne surrendered his army of around 6,000 on 17 October. The Battle of Saratoga was a turning point because of what it persuaded France to do.
French and Spanish Involvement
France had been quietly funnelling money, muskets and powder to the Americans since 1776, anxious to see Britain humiliated after the loss of Canada in 1763. After Saratoga the French foreign minister Vergennes signed two treaties at Paris on 6 February 1778: an alliance and a treaty of commerce. France was now an open belligerent. Spain followed in June 1779, allied to France though not formally to the United States. The Dutch joined the war against Britain in December 1780. What had begun as a colonial rebellion was now a global war from the West Indies to the English Channel to the Indian Ocean. Britain had to defend Gibraltar (besieged by Spain), Jamaica (threatened by France), Minorca (lost in 1782), and the home islands themselves — the Channel was briefly threatened by a combined Franco-Spanish fleet in 1779. Manpower and ships that could have crushed Washington had to be sent elsewhere.
A common student error is to centre the war on Washington’s leadership and treat French and Spanish help as a footnote. The specification weights all four factors, and the highest band rewards balance. Saratoga was an American victory commanded by Gates and Arnold, not Washington; the French alliance it produced added 12,000 troops at Yorktown and a French fleet that trapped Cornwallis; Spanish troops under Bernardo de Gálvez took the British forts at Mobile and Pensacola, opening a second front along the Gulf coast; the British surrendered at Yorktown to a combined Franco-American force under French command for the siege engineering. Higher-band answers explain how these factors interacted, rather than ranking Washington as the single decisive cause.
Washington’s Leadership and Valley Forge
If Washington did not win battles, why did the specification rank him alongside French intervention? Because in 1777–78 the Continental Army nearly disintegrated and his leadership prevented it. Around 11,000 troops wintered with Washington at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania between December 1777 and June 1778. Some 2,500 died of disease and exposure. Pay was months in arrears, food was so short that men ate ‘fire-cake’ (flour and water roasted on stones), and shoes were so scarce that some marches left bloody footprints in the snow. Washington kept the army together by argument, by personal example, and by accepting the help of the Prussian-trained Baron von Steuben in turning farmers into a drilled force capable of standing in line of battle. The army that emerged in spring 1778 was a different army. The British failure to destroy it during that winter was their largest single mistake of the war. Washington also chose, after 1776, a strategy of patience — avoiding pitched battles, harrying British supply lines, keeping the army intact rather than risking it on Continental-style fixed engagements.
Around 11,000 Continental troops wintered with Washington at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania from December 1777 to June 1778. About 2,500 died of disease and exposure. Baron von Steuben’s drilling that winter turned the survivors into a professional army.
The Southern Campaign and Yorktown, 1781
From late 1778 the British shifted strategy southwards, hoping to mobilise loyalist support in Georgia and the Carolinas. They captured Savannah and Charleston, but were harassed by patriot militia and partisan leaders such as Francis Marion. In summer 1781 General Cornwallis marched his army into Yorktown on the Virginia coast and dug in to await resupply by sea. The French fleet under Admiral de Grasse beat off a British relief fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September 1781, leaving Cornwallis sealed off from the sea. Washington and the French commander Rochambeau brought their armies south. After a three-week siege Cornwallis surrendered around 7,000 men on 19 October 1781. News of the surrender forced Lord North’s government from office in March 1782. The Rockingham ministry that replaced him, and Lord Shelburne’s from July 1782, sought a settlement.
The specification asks students to weigh British mistakes alongside Washington and the European allies. The clearest examples are concrete and worth memorising. The 1777 plan that left Burgoyne unsupported because Howe sailed for Philadelphia handed the Americans Saratoga and the French alliance. The choice to launch a southern strategy from 1779 in the belief that Loyalists would rise in large numbers under-estimated how far patriot militia control had spread; the Loyalists who did fight (around 19,000 men over the war) were never the deciding force London hoped. Cornwallis’s decision to dig in at Yorktown without secure naval cover assumed a level of British command of the sea that the French fleet was about to deny him at the Chesapeake. Higher-band answers identify mistakes by name and link them to specific outcomes; lower-band answers say only that Britain ‘made mistakes’.
The Peace of Paris, 1783
The American negotiators were John Adams, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin had been in Paris since 1776 and was the senior diplomat of the new republic. The Americans broke the terms of their alliance with France and negotiated separately with Britain, fearing that France and Spain would settle for a smaller American territory in order to win their own concessions. The Peace of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783, was generous to the United States: Britain recognised independence, ceded all territory east of the Mississippi between the Great Lakes and Florida, and granted American fishermen access to the Newfoundland banks. Franklin’s personal standing in Paris and his coolness in negotiation helped secure these terms. Spain regained Florida and Minorca; France gained almost nothing for its trouble and was left with vast debts that contributed to its own revolution in 1789.