By 1778, the British were increasingly being forced to realize that they had completely screwed the pooch with regards to the war with their colonies. Having completely lost their army invading from Quebec, the British soldiers who remained hunkered down in New York City while their Patriot counterparts did the same in nearby Valley Forge. Both sides seemed content to take a wait and see attitude towards the conflict, though this was to the benefit of the Patriots and the detriment of the British. Ongoing negotiations by Patriot leaders in Europe were beginning to bear fruit and the weakness of the British gave them the leeway to focus on the frontier. One expeditionary force focused on taking British trading posts in the Ohio and Illinois countries, while a second went after the Iroquois and Loyalists in New York. The latter of these was a scorched earth campaign so devastating that the thousands of Iroquois fled north into Quebec, with an estimated half of the population dying from disease, starvation, and warfare. Though raids by the Iroquois and Loyalists continued, the Iroquois Confederacy was shattered and never again a great power on the North American continent.
Impressed by the Patriot victories, and rather wanting to see the British get the fucking shit kicked out of them, France entered into a military alliance with the Patriots in 1778, promising troops and ships to defeat the British. The French then in turn entered into alliances with Spain and the Dutch Republic to harry British shipping and attack British colonies in Florida and the Caribbean. This caused a pretty widespread panic in Britain given the sugar and coffee produced there was worth a metric shit ton more than all the goods produced in revolting colonies, their value being mostly in tobacco and buying British manufactured goods. As a result, troops which were meant to put down the revolt were instead sent to the Caribbean, forcing the British army in New York City to re-assess its strategy. What they came up with was a half-cooked plan which became known as the southern strategy.
Launched in 1779, the southern strategy was an attempt to forcefully seize the rebelling southern colonies to further isolate the more northern colonies. The British figured there was a greater number of Loyalists there, meaning they’d need fewer British troops, and that victory would secure the profitable tobacco production of the region. However, like all things done by the British during the war, they completely fucked it up. While initially victorious, managing to recruit Loyalist militias and take Georgia and South Carolina, things quickly went to shit. Policies such as forcefully seizing property of suspected rebels, offering freedom to slaves who were willing to fight with them, and in general being pompous dicks to anyone who didn’t lick their boots, alienated the populous and resulted in a guerilla war which sapped troops and supplies. Despite this setback, in 1780 the British marched north into North Carolina, which failed to accomplish any of its goals while Georgia and South Carolina descended into chaos. The British fared little better on other fronts, with an attempt to retake the Ohio Country ending in yet another defeat.
Things finally came to a head in 1781. A French army was soon to arrive and the British were convinced it was going to attack New York City. To prepare for the attack, they recalled the British army in North Carolina, which marched to Yorktown in Virginia to be picked up by the British Navy. However, it was all a ruse. While the French fleet blocked the escape by sea, a combined Patriot and French army besieged Yorktown. With no hope of escape, the British army surrendered. It was the last major action of the war. Though the British still controlled New York City and Charleston, the British government lacked the will to send further troops. Instead, they doubled down on arming their native allies along the frontier. The resulting bloodbath killed nearly 10 percent of the colonial frontier population, an even greater percentage of the remaining native population, and imbedded a deep-seated distrust and hatred which would forever poison relations between the two groups. However, it did nothing to change the final result.
In 1783, the British government finally broke and agreed to sign the Peace of Paris, which amongst other things, recognized the newly created states as an independent nation, granted them all territory westward to the Mississippi River, returned Florida to Spain, and gave a few Caribbean colonies to France. All four European nations were heavily in debt and eager to end the war. While Britain was the least in debt, popular support for the war effort had completely faded, with the British elite and merchants figuring they could make just as much money trading with independent states as they did with British colonies. As a result, the stubbornness of the new confederacy of independent states had allowed them to get the upper hand in the negotiations. However, they were also heavily in debt to France and the Dutch Republic, and the states were already beginning to squabble amongst one another, raising concerns of the longevity of their alliance. Thus began the grand experiment known as the United States of America.
