[[Image:Treaty of alliance.JPG|thumb|300px|The 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France]]
Believing that they would benefit militarily by allying themselves with a powerful nation, the newly formed [[United States]] in Feb. 1778 formed an alliance with [[France]] against [[Great Britain]]in February 1778. [[Benjamin Franklin]] was the chief negotiator. He was popular in Paris and American victory at Saratoga in 1777 convinced France that an alliance could be a military success and humiliate France's arch-enemy by stripping away most of its empire.
According to this first military treaty of the new nation, the U.S. would provide for a defensive alliance to aid France should England Britain attack, and neither France nor the United States would make peace with England Britain until the independence of the United States was recognized.
France, with its powerful navy, did declare war on Britain, and brought the Netherlands and Spain into the war along with their strong navies, while keeping the other major powers neutral. Britain was isolated, outgunned at sea and outnumbered on land.. The French sent an army and navy, which proved decisive at the battle of Yorktown in 1781. Both sides thus honored the treaty, which lapsed when peace was signed at the [[Treaty of Paris]] in 1783.
In the 1790s the [[Democratic-Republican]] party of [[Thomas Jefferson]] tried and failed to keep the treaty alive, as the U.S. and France fought an informal war in 1798 known as the "Quasi War".