Darthfanta,
gotta agree with this: "The French should have paid their debt first,reformed their taxes AND THEN fight wars if necessary. "
and, while I disagree that the French are regaining their colonies, you are correct that if it was going to be remotely possible, they should have conducted the war as if that were their priority. However, I think they didn't have it as a priority. It's hard to see what their priority was, other than bring Britain to it's knees around the globe. Spain, wisely, chose to limit it's goals: regaining Florida (granted, S had a very nice advantage of being able to launch from New Orleans/Cuba), regaining Minorca, regaining Gibraltar, and limiting spending on the actual revolution. France was almost the exact opposite: No real goal except beating England, and giving the revolutionaries as much as possible. a huge part of the problem is that France completely misread the situation, and thought that the Patriots were on the cusp of winning, so one nice push from France would send Britain packing, and limited output would gain France a grateful trading partner. wrong on all counts. Britain proved they were in it for the long haul, the Patriots waged war based on the long haul, France got sucked in for the long haul, and the future US showed they didn't much care what happened to France in trade or as allies after independence.
But IF France had limited it's goals to regaining Canada, now you allow Britain to concentrate everything in the Atlantic and the ability to defeat France directly and knock them out of the war.