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Anticipating an assault on New York and seeing the end of the war coming General Clinton who had taken overall command of the war effort launched an attack on Philadelphia to try and capture congress and maybe Washington himself to try and increase their at the negotiations. Instead of attacking overland where they would face the majority of the Continental Army and make a crossing on a river he didn’t really have the equipment for he sailed out of the harbor and up Delaware Bay. Washington hurries from New Jersey to try to defend Philadelphia but failures in command mostly made by Charles Lee allowed them to be outflanked forced to retreat and allow Philadelphia to be captured. But Clinton didn’t stay there long after a couple of weeks he was marching back to New York being constantly harassed as he did. Trying to defeat a large part of the forces in New York outside of their defenses Washington devised a plan to engage the rear guard while he attacked the venerable baggage train and the main column but once again Lee failed in his assignment and was breaking in the face of a counter attack until Washington showed up and reorganized the defense and held forcing the British back on their way towards New York. The Americans harried the British and managed to cut them off and pin them against the sea and the French made sure they would not escape at sea. Their surrender opened the way to New York and soon Washington was marching towards the city and waited as the French moved to blockade the harbor Admiral d’Estaing refused to enter fearing his ships would not easily be able to move around easily in the harbor. Not knowing that the French wouldn’t enter the harbor the British evacuated the city under the cover of night and sailed on to Halifax. After the evacuation the Americans moved into the city almost uncontested but some loyalists did fight and mostly died causing some destruction and one fire that did some damage to the city. General Sullivan was given some men and was sent to take Newport then after that to reinforce the Halifax siege was largely floundering without enough men or cannons to really take the city.

Negotiations had started in early 1779 and mostly achieved nothing with France and Spain looking to get more from Britain than what they had taken by force. One of their first victories had been Majorca soon after they had joined the war in 1777 and then began their blockade of Gibraltar which was very porous allowing the garrison to be resupplied by sea several times through the years. The French in the Caribbean captured Dominica, Saint Vincent, and Grenada while losing Saint Luca while in India their allies mostly came to a draw with the Brithish. Spanish conquests were more mundane. They captured West Florida in 1777 but were delayed in taking East Florida till 1779 taking Saint Augustine which was just being invested by a small mostly militia force of Americans lead by Nathanael Greene who after losing out on their big prize of Florida moved by ship to take Bermuda which had seen a previous attempt aborted shortly after land fall. British and Spanish both failed to make any gains in Central America with British gains being wiped out by disease. The British failed to keep France and Spain off Jamaica but did succeed in driving them off then failed in their attempt to take Havana. As negotiations continued to drag on the Americans took possession of Prince Edward Island and had their own invasion attempt of Newfoundland fail because they couldn’t get troops to the shore. Seeing the negotiations drag the American delegates threatened to make their own peace with Britain, Spain wasn’t happy with the threat but came off some of their more onerous demands since they saw they were already in possession of all they were going to get brought France around to more reasonable demands bringing the war to an end when they all signed the peace treaty in 1780. The peace settled most of the terms as keeping what everyone had conquered America gained everything east of the Mississippi and north of the Floridas despite French and Spanish attempts to create an indian buffer state and south of the Hudson Bay Territory, excluding Newfoundland though did gain access to the fishing grounds, and also gained Bahamas and Bermuda.

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