How did the Colonies win the American War of Independence?

In 1775, American revolutionaries went to war with the British. Seeking independence from colonial ties, they fought more than 150 battles over eight years. How did a relatively new nation of just 2.5 million people face off against the greatest military power on the planet at that time? And when exactly did the tide turn? In this first of two episodes with Don Wildman, host of American History Hit, and Major Jonathan Bratten of the National Guard, Dan represents the British in the Revolutionary struggle. Edited by Aidan Lonergan, and produced by Sophie Gee, Mariana Des Forges and Charlotte Long. Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask! Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/ You can now find Dan Snow's History Hit on YouTube! Watch episodes every Friday here https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 1:15Speaker 01

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• 1:31Dan Snow?

  In the morning of October 17th, 1781, a drummer boy beat out the parley. A particular rhythm on the drum recognisable to friend and foe alike. It was a signal that the British wanted to talk. As was the white handkerchief tied to the end of the sword of a British officer. A man who mounted the parapet on the British defences at their stronghold on the shores of the Chesapeake, in Virginia, at Yorktown. The officer was blindthumbed. He was brought behind American lines to secure terms of surrender for around 8,000 British soldiers and sailors trapped by Franco-American forces.

• 2:17Dan Snow?

  Two days later, on the 19th of October 1781, the forces of the British general Lord Conwallis marched out of the fort and laid down their arms at the feet of their enemies. This really marks the effective end of the Revolutionary War in North America, a war that had begun six years prior with the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It would take two more years after the surrender at Yorktown for the British and Americans to finally agree a peace treaty. They signed the Treaty of Paris and ended the war for good. The British Army had been defeated in North America,

• 3:00Dan Snow?

  and the United States of America had their independence.

• 3:08Dan Snow?

  So how on earth did this, certainly at times, ragtag continental army defeat one of the greatest military powers on earth? Today on Dan Snow's History, we're exploring the American Revolution. Now, we're obviously going through many of the key 250th anniversaries in some detail as they crop up. I mean, you can listen to episodes about the Boston Tea Party and Lexington and Concord, which we've just broadcast. But in this one, we thought we'd bring you an overview of the whole thing. We'd break down some of those key moments and turning points and try and figure out exactly how and why a rebel victory became inevitable. We're going to have a little discussion here. We're going to go head to head with a US Army historian. He's also an engineering officer. He's a friend of the podcast, Major Jonathan Bratten. I'll be representing the British perspective and tactics in the war,

• 3:52Dan Snow?

  and Jonathan will be giving us the American side of the story. To stop an all-out war breaking out once again, the conversation we mediated by our very own Don Wildman, host of our wonderful sister podcast, American History Hit. He'll umpire us, he'll also stop us getting too distracted by tiny, irrelevant details, so he'll keep us trundling through the timeline of the war, so no one gets left behind, hurt, or remains in ignorance. It's a fun one, folks. Enjoy.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Hello, gentlemen.

• 4:39Dan Snow?

  How are you doing? Good to be on the podcast.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Wish I could be there in person.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Take your positions. My job today is to keep you men at a friendly distance here. Before we get into the nitty gritty, let's give a quick overview. From 1775 until 1783, after 100 years of colonialization and almost 20 years of unrest, revolutionaries from 13 of Britain's North American colonies were at war with their British rulers. The war began in skirmishes with the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The revolutionary forces were rudimentary, mostly using guerrilla tactics against the more organized forces of the British military. In the summer of 1776, July 4th, the colonies declare independence from the British,

• 5:30Speaker 02

  giving their forces a much-needed boost. Finally, the tables start to turn in favor of the Continental Army, the Americans, with the battles of Trenton and Saratoga. The Americans are further galvanized in 1778, when the French enter the fight with them, and when Spain and the Dutch declare war against the British. Now, rather than just trying to subdue a rebellion in the colonies, the British find themselves in a global war. Finally, in October 1781, with victory at Yorktown, peace is in sight for the Americans. The war was brutal. Both sides had moments of brilliance and disaster. But were the colonies always destined to win? Gentlemen, give me an overview of what's at stake for both sides here. What are they fighting for?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Jonathan, you first.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  So, they're fighting for empire. They're fighting for, essentially, the British, and remember, they're all British at this time, are fighting for this idea that the British Empire will extend to what is now Pittsburgh, to the Forks of the Ohio. It will extend to Canada. It will extend to the rest of the Sugar Islands. And of course, throughout the whole war, it will extend to India. But the idea is that you are fighting for empire. You can boil it down from a colonial provincial perspective, that they are fighting for a variety of reasons. Everything from a religious idea that, you know, those evil papists gotta go, to the idea that they'd like to have a little bit of peace and quiet on their frontier. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, what you've got is you are fighting a war for empire, as historian Fred Anderson called it.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  What are the Americans fighting for, Dan, from a British perspective?

• 7:06Dan Snow?

  Well, I guess we think they are fighting to avoid paying any tax, avoid paying their fair share. The seven years' war, the French-Indian wars, cost a vast amount of money. That war was fought, started by the Americans, I should say. Young George Washington strolls into the forks of the Ohio, strolls into the Pennsylvania backcountry and inadvertently starts a global war. So that war is being fought to protect these British colonies, to ensure that they're freed from French and indigenous enemies, and they don't want to pay their fair share. So it's, I guess, but for me, really, it's a war about dealing with the messy endings of the previous war. Now, we've heard with that in the 20th century, they might think about the Second World War and how it grows out of the First. You might think about the Vietnam in a way grows out of the Second World War as well. That's the nature of these

• 7:51Dan Snow?

  things. Britain ends up with this massive, unexpected, very expensive, enormous North American empire, stretches from really Florida up to Hudson Bay. And they've got to work out what to do. Who's going to run it? Who's going to pay for it? Who's going to control it? And one element, don't you think, Jonathan, is actually, this war's also about who gets to enjoy the benefits of that new big empire. People in Virginia, people in Pennsylvania, people in the lower colonies, they're saying, hang on, we think we should be not just extending up to the forks of the Ohio, we should be going even further. We want the land to the Mississippi and maybe even beyond. And actually, the Brits are saying, no, no, no, no, no, this is not going to be just a free-for-all from our American colonies. We're going to

• 8:34Dan Snow?

  take a more, you know, so this is an argument over the the shape of this massive and unexpected gift, but it turns out to be a very, very poisoned gift that's landed in the British Empire's lap.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  So I mentioned at the top, resources are obviously very different. Outgunned and outmanned. Thank you, Hamilton, for making that phrase very common. One advantage that colonials have is home turf. Are they going to be able to use that, Jonathan? Is that really such an advantage?

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Well, the biggest advantage, it's the Atlantic Ocean. That's America's biggest advantage always. And Dan can sit there and say, well, you know, the Atlantic Ocean is just a great surface to convey the Royal Navy and the ships of the fleet. His Majesty's forces will will crush the outbreak. No, it's a it's a phenomenal barrier. That means that anything that happens in the colonies, one, the information is going to take three weeks to a month or two to get back across the ocean. So the information war that can be fought in the colonies, because from the purposes of these nascent Americans, these rebelling individuals, trying to convey this idea of what on earth are we fighting for? And why you should fight with us is probably more important than what we are going to do to the British. Because

• 9:44Speaker 03

  first, in order to actually have anything to fight the British with, you actually have to have united colonies. And if there's anyone who's more fractious prior to 1775, I mean, I guess, Parliament, but also it's the 13 American colonies. I mean, they just cannot get along at all. And so first, so you have to have that. And then also, anything that happens, it means that if the the British are going to have to ship massive amounts of supplies across this ocean. So this long supply line, this long line of communication, that's absolutely vital. So when we talk about home turf for the Americans, it's less the land. Now, I will say that the British officer

• 10:24Speaker 03

  perspective in North America, to quote a British officer who lands in 1755, I believe, and looks at the Ohio Country and says, I cannot conceive how war is made in such country. That's probably a lot of the British perspective. But it the terrain is going to be difficult for both sides. Yeah.

• 10:42Dan Snow?

  Yeah. And learning from Jonathan for the first time that occasionally these US states don't get on very well. I'm surprised to hear that. Fractious, you say. That's that's exciting news. One to watch, maybe. I think you're totally right. The Atlantic Ocean's a big disaster. The landscape, it just swallows up armies. It breaks armies. It's there's there's far more water and marsh and bog and rock and trees than there are in the that the cockpit of war where the British Army is used to fighting in France, in northern France and Belgium. But I I also think that get the same problem you do in maybe Vietnam when it is superpower goes a long way away. It is able, when the enemy is standing in front of them, they're able to fight and often destroy them. It's when the enemy is not standing in front of them. It's when they just drift back and there's this, they're fighting communities that there are,

• 11:26Dan Snow?

  there are people that turn up, pick up a musket and just make life incredibly difficult for the British Army across the, all of the, it's just hard to hold down vast amounts of terrain, no matter how big your army is.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Well, you're talking about the guerrilla tactics, which all, every American student is raised to honor, you know, working with what you have, you know, and they learned it from the Native Americans, all these sort of mythology things that we learned.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Definitely mythology. There's definitely mythology, tons of mythology.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  And yet, it's the way things work at the battles of Lexington and Concord, but we, you know, lose these battles right through to the middle of the war. So at first, everyone has at hand is working out pretty well for the British. Things are going to go pretty well for them for a long time in this war.

• 12:11Dan Snow?

  I guess so. I guess the big problem, the British Army is not as big as it needs to be. The British have bet the farm since the 17th century, or, you know, maybe even before, on having a big navy, right? Britain's an island. You, you think, well, we can protect our homeland and we can start to enjoy the opportunities of global trade and maybe even some colonies in the rest of the world by keeping a big navy. So the idea of running a big navy and a big army at the same time. So, so Prussia has an army around 300,000 strong at this point. And, and Prussia is, is, it stretches, I don't know, from what is today Maine down to maybe, maybe DC, what is it, the Chesapeake? No, that's just a small portion of these colonies. And Prussia has an army of 300,000 men. Britain has an army of like 50,000 men at this point. A lot of them in Ireland, which is itself

• 12:55Dan Snow?

  in a, in a, near rebellious state most of the time. So actually, yeah, on paper, Britain's got lots of troops, but doesn't have anything like the amount of troops you'd need to go town by town and stick a little Union flag up the flagpole and leave a bunch of guys there to, and then move on to the next place. You know, that is, that requires massive manpower. So, so yeah, Britain's got an advantage straight away, but British people hope, the Brit planners hope that what they can do is just put the navy up and down the East Coast, blockade all these places like Charleston and, and Rhoda and Providence and New York and Boston. And then the provincials just are reminded of their loyalty to the British Crown and decide to, but if that doesn't happen, Britain does have a problem. You've got to put boots on the ground, you've got to put a lot.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  First turning point, Siege of Boston, April 1775 to March 1776. Following their victory at Lexington and Concord, the British troops are garrisoned in Boston. The colonial troops besieged them for 11 months. Jonathan, what are the revolutionary forces tactics during that siege?

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Well, it's try to use small blows to make a statement wherever you can. Remember, Washington's working with an army that is under critical shortages. You know, Dan talks about the shortages of manpower for the Crown forces. Washington's facing the same thing. He can't even keep track of where his troops are day to day because half of them go home to tend their crops. Because this idea of serving in a longstanding army, a thing we've been taught, is very, very bad. Part of our British tradition. That's another reason why the British Army is not ever going to be large, is because I guess you guys had some problems with the king using the army for bad things. I don't know. Some guy Cromwell came along. It's some small, small history there. But this is very much a thing that is inherited by the Americans.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  There's not this idea that, yes, we're going to have long-serving armies. You mentioned Lexington and Concord earlier as an idea, as an example of success, and also Boston. Well, the problem here is that it's a false measure of success. Lexington and Concord is a 1 in 100,000 chances that you get that exact scenario happening precisely where it did.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  You have Massachusetts being prepared more than any other colony to be able to fight this type of war. And then that ability, people just think, oh, we can duplicate that anywhere. Well, no, you can't duplicate a culture of 150 years of independent-mindedness and military tradition. And then the other piece is that, yes, Washington is dealing with an army that's got about 13 rounds per man in the Siege of Boston. So you have to make little raids here and there. But ultimately, Washington would love a large-scale assault to seize Boston, which is simply not practicable. His commanders tell him, hey, boss, you do this, you're going to stack up bodies like cordwood.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  And it's going to be Henry Knox bringing over the artillery over the Berkshire Mountains through those horrible swamps, awful terrain in the dead of winter. To place artillery over on Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston. And so Washington gets a win, but it's not the win that he wants because no one respects a siege win. People respect the bloody battle, the pitched battle, the outmaneuvering your enemy, forcing them to flee in gloriously before you. And that's not what he gets. And so he has to now think about what are, how do I fight this war at the next battle in New York?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  What happens? I've always wondered, what happens when they leave? Do the British go back and say, okay, so that didn't work out very well. We need to reconnoiter here. And that's going to lead to a lot of ships in New York Harbor.

• 16:20Dan Snow?

  That's right. And Jonathan's being very modest here. I don't want to do his job for him, but I mean, Washington, I think, does brilliantly here. And they chase the British, they humiliate the British right at the beginning of the war. This is just shocking. Britain's poured reinforcements into this town to bring Massachusetts back to a state of subjugation to the Crown law. And here they are, the people of Massachusetts and other New Englanders, and led by a man from Geneva, George Washington. They have strangled Boston. They forced the Brits to leave because of the shadow of the big cannon overhanging the city. Loyalists have left with them. The conditions were tough, like the British Army is kind of starving. It's desperately rounding up cows. Everyone's laughing at it. This is just, this is brutal.

• 17:02Dan Snow?

  And so, yeah, they, they head off to Halifax and then they think, you know, we need to go somewhere. We think there's plenty of loyalists in New York. We like the harbor in New York. We, it's a much better, it's a much more sustainable place. There's, there's, it's easy to get food and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, they end up sending a big old fleet to New York Harbor. And, and this is where I think if we want to play this game, I think the Brits come nearest achieving a pretty good result this campaign. They could have, well, I'm sure we'll get on to it, but I think this is the bit where I think the Brits are let down by their, by their leaders in this bit, but I'm sure we'll talk about that.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  So these are warning signs. Do you think the British were spooked at all at this point, Dan?

• 17:41Dan Snow?

  I think the British definitely spooked. And in fact, British commanders are writing home going, we've got a, we've got a serious problem out here. The locals do not want us here. And it's not just a band of troublemakers. It is very widespread feeling. We've kind of, we've lost control of the hinterland. We've lost control. So, you know, we can control a port or two. We can't actually, we can't, we've lost control of the countryside. And we, and you need a huge manpower to get this back. And the politicians are like, pull yourselves together, it's a bunch of farmers.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Hmm hmm. Yeah. But they have demonstrated that the colonials have a certain will and determination to do what they want to do here. We have strengthened the authority of that institution, that Congress, that is so controversial, suddenly congeals, gets some authority behind it. And George Washington has emerged. They have a central leader. This is not good for the British.

• 18:32Dan Snow?

  No, this is not good. This is, the Americans are on their way to building a state, on their way to building an army and, and a Marine Corps and a Navy. I mean, this is, this is bad news. This is not just a provincial rebellion.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  But this is also a paper lion in many ways, right, Jonathan? I mean, Bunker Hill was not a win. Lexington conquered was one in the retreat, you know? That's where they did the damage.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Oh, Lexington conquered is a great win. What are you talking about? This is utterly pulverizing an entire punitive expedition, driving it back, fleeing at the end to its rear guard ranks in Lexington. Bunker Hill, you know, it's a British victory. That's a clear win, right? You know, taking some ground at the cost of 10% of the officers in the British Army. But, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's pretty catastrophic fighting that shows, I think it shows that the war is going to be long and it's going to be bloody and you're not going to get a quick victory by parading troops through towns in order to show the might of the British Empire. I think we're also forgetting, we're being very Boston or New England or East Coast centric. Remember, America has also just done a thing in Quebec.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Hmm hmm.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  The American Army in the fall of 1775 launches a two-pronged invasion of Canada that seizes Montreal and but for, you know, a very untimely whiff of grape shot that blows Richard Montgomery into little bits outside the, the walls of Quebec City, might have even taken Quebec City as well. And then you would be left with the situation of what on earth do you do with this 14th colony? And how do you defend Canada?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Uh, I think honestly, it's, it's probably good that the colonials are, are forced out of Canada in the spring of 1776, because otherwise you're just pouring more and more troops into this sort of. Black hole, a little bit akin to what the British will do in the South post 1778.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  So there's a lot going on in the theater and it's showing that, hey, yeah, this is a ragtag, but they all just mounted an invasion that had a general Guy Carlton fleeing for his life up to Quebec City from Montreal. And now the British are not only have to contend with, hey, how do we put down this rebellious colonies in New England? But how do we get one of our own loyal colonies back?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then they built on little fleet and chased Benedict Arnold down Lake Champlain, sinking his boat.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  And Benedict Arnold stings right back with his little fleet that he built out of nothing, but some hopes and dreams and Massachusetts sailors.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  All right, we're gonna launch over vast territory here to July 1776, the Declaration of Independence, a hugely pivotal moment. In the school textbooks and in the media, we have this kind of image of all the founding fathers standing together, lit by candlelight, gathered around a piece of parchment, you know, the whole image wasn't really this way at all, was it Jonathan?

• 21:16Speaker 03

  No, I mean, it was very public, for one thing. If you're gonna have a rebellion, you know, you gotta do some specific things in public and very openly. Takes place and as with every good, you know, a constitutional convention, Philadelphia, stupidly hot declaration planning at Philadelphia, stupidly hot. I can imagine that all these rooms stank to high heaven of all these perspiring would be politicians. But I think the critical piece of the declaration is how rapidly it is disseminated.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  After they wrangle over what it's gonna be, and it is, there's a lot of wrangling. There's Jefferson originally has a piece in there. If you look at the grievances of the colonies to the crown, which is what the declaration really is, hey, here's the why of what we're doing. They're saying, hey, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this. We don't like it. We feel like our rights are being trampled. And then there's contentions, as I said, you know, the colonies are going to fight each other. So there's a bit in there about, hey, the British are forcing the slave trade upon us. And South Carolina is like, wait a minute, hang on, nope, take that one out and that one will revisit that in 1861. But the, so after all that is ironed out and then it is pushed out rapidly to the Continental

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Army, to the army itself, to, there are readings of the Declaration of Independence in New York City, where Washington has it read to the Continental Army there, at Fort Ticonderoga, on Mount Independence, at all these critical places where the troops are, it is explained to native allies. Yeah. It is this mass effort to cause an information win that is something that I don't think the British foresaw was how this was going to be used to turn the narrative against, against specifically the Crown, George III.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  And this is treason. This is an act of treason.

• 23:04Dan Snow?

  Don, you're darn right, it's treason and we're still upset about it. Poor George III comes out, I mean, the, the list of grievances against George III in the Declaration of Independence is deranged. But anyway, we don't have to dwell on that. But I think, you know, and Jonathan mentions what's going on in New York. At the same time, there's this campaign in New York that I'm super into, I, I, this almost my key moment of the American Revolutionary War. And the British commanders in New York are a little bit hesitant, a little bit cautious. George Washington gets a little bit lucky, maybe once or twice to the weather and, and you get the, the so-called, you know, the miracle of when, when they're, when they, they managed to evacuate troops from Long Island, they managed to evacuate troops from Manhattan. And each time the Brits just keep failing to kind of put Washington in the bag, just get that army, capture it, destroy it. Now, I'm not sure it would have made a huge difference, but it could have, if you lose

• 23:47Dan Snow?

  the main field army of the rebellion of the revolution of this young now, young republic, then maybe that would have made a difference. So there's a moment here, I think, where the Brits could have pulled it off. But like I say, these, these British commanders, they're a little bit flat-footed.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. So Jonathan, the final statement on the Declaration, it basically is a piece of, propaganda is a negative word, but I mean, it is that kind of thing. And people don't really take that into consideration, how important it was to get the message out, not only externally to foreign powers, but also internally.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Well, and it's also, it gives a purpose for the war because remember, I say this a lot, but the action, the events of April, May 1775, and even in June, you know, all the way up through the olive branch petition where Congress says, hey, King George, you know, we could, I don't know, maybe come to an agreement, patch these things up. All of this is not, there's no widespread movement saying, oh, yes, we are going to be a united and independent American entity. And that is what the Declaration is doing. It is taking this thing that was probably so far outside people's minds in April of 1775 and making it a reality rapidly. That is, you know, really just one year and a few months from the beginning of hostilities to a full

• 25:02Speaker 03

  movement for independence. And yes, it shores up one side. It also creates a very firm dividing line down the middle. Either you are for independence or you are not. And if you're not for independence, you are with the enemy. We talk a lot about the sort of numbers involved on who was loyalist, who is patriot, et cetera, et cetera. I also don't like those terms because I'm pretty sure all the loyalists thought of themselves as very good patriotic Britons. But really, you've got about 30% of the population going for independence, 30% loyalists, and 30% to 40% wholly in the middle, just trying to survive, which is why you have these British commanders who are so frustrated when they go into a town and everyone pulls out a Union Jack and says, yay, George III. And then they go, all right, cool, we've got this space. And

• 25:46Speaker 03

  then they march on and then those people will immediately sell supplies to the rebels or send drafts off to the Continental Army or support the militia. And you've got everyone from Cornwallis to Burgoyne to Sir Henry Clinton to Howe, who packs it up in 1777, 1778. He's just like, I'm sick of this. I'm going home. All of these British commanders who can't actually grasp the problem on the ground, which is that it is very difficult to defeat an idea and a popular will. It's very easy to defeat an army, which Howe does. Burgoyne and Clinton and Cornwallis all defeat, tactically defeat rebel forces, but it doesn't matter.

• 26:38Dan Snow?

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• 27:21Dan Snow?

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• 27:49Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery. A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what will baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 28:33Speaker 01

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• 30:02Speaker 02

  Well, within the year following the Declaration of Independence does not go well for the Continental Army, with the exception of perhaps the Battle of Princeton. There's a lot of nooks and crannies there, but we head towards the middle of 1777 and the Battle of Saratoga, which I think is fair to say is the next huge pivotal point, when things could have gone a lot differently than they did. Dan, we have talked many times about Saratoga. It is a complex event. But what are the headlines of this?

• 30:29Dan Snow?

  The headlines are that the plan was very, very complex, as you say. Now, it was hugely ambitious, probably overly ambitious. But then again, there are examples in North America, whether it's in 1760 in the in the French Indian War, or whether it's, as Jonathan talks about, in the American assault on Montreal in 1775. There are examples of big bodies of men moving across this very difficult landscape and all getting to the right place at the right time. This is not one of those examples. So the Brits, they had this smart idea, which is they're going to maybe try and just divide, just create a firewall. These troubles, the New Englanders, the real problem here, and the middle colonies, the southern colonies, they may be a little more Tory, they may be a little more relaxed about the idea of the British Empire. There is perhaps some truth in that idea.

• 31:12Dan Snow?

  And they thought, what we need to do is just build a wall between these two groups. So we've got, let's get a force moving down from Canada, advancing south towards Albany, down that great invasion corridor that's seen so many armies marching to and fro over the, over the decades. We'll get an army marching from Lake Ontario, east towards Albany. So that's another prong, coming in from Lake Ontario, coming towards Albany. And then we get a force moving up from New York, where we've captured New York and, and parts of New Jersey. So they come due north up the Hudson Valley. And so from three different directions, we kind of arrive at Albany, and we cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. The problem is, none of those forces do what they're supposed to, and none of them arrive at the right time, and none of the commanders do what they're supposed to.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Because of bad leadership?

• 31:55Dan Snow?

  A little bit of bad leadership, a little bit of just logistics in the 8th century. Tough, boots fall apart, everyone gets sick, lack of food, and then a bit of resistance by the Americans. I'm not doing them down here. So what is supposed to be a three-way attack ends up with one poor force coming down from Canada and finding itself completely outnumbered at the end of a hideous supply route. Dealing with far too many defenders outside Albany at a place called Saratoga and the Brits knows they're in big trouble.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the first big surrender, right, of any kind of, yeah, it is. Thanks, Don, it is.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  It's a great own goal, honestly. It's a great own goal because it's the British, you know, it's Whitehall's job to oversee a cohesive war plan. And the problem is, they approve every plan that they're given, including the one where Howe in New York says, oh, actually, I'm not marching north, I'm marching south to Philadelphia.

• 32:41Dan Snow?

  Yes.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Burgoyne knows this. Everyone knows this. And Burgoyne goes, yep, okay, I'll meet you in Albany. A and B are not leading to C. They're doing A to F to Z. And it's, I honestly have massive sympathy for these poor British troops because they're doomed from the start by one of the most colossally poor oversights of planning on the British perspective. Don't approve all the plans. Don't leave it up to commanders to choose their own adventure, if you will, when it comes to strategy making.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Gives a great showcase for the crazy Benedict Arnold to run around on his horse, get a shot.

• 33:18Dan Snow?

  He is. He's impressive at this part. But I think, and once we've got this battle at Saratoga, again, you see this problem for the Brits, that, yes, they do tend to perform better in battles in the American Revolutionary War. But when the Americans are well-led, when they are supplied, and particularly when they have the advantages of ground or defensive, they can fire musket volleys that are as vicious as anything the Brits will come up against in Europe. And so you can't assume as the British Army that you are just gonna grind forward and disperse this group of amateurs. And actually, I think at Saratoga, the Brits find themselves repelled by very impressive American infantry tactics. And so that is, that is to their credit as well.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Jonathan, the upshot of this really is the French getting interested in joining this war. It's not just, it's not a done deal, but this could be an advantage for them backing this army, right?

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's Saratoga, but then it's also the the survival of Washington's army. Following Brandywine, you know, he goes from a defeat at Brandywine on the defensive to a a tactical defeat in Germantown where he's on the offensive. This is an army mounting an offensive after a defeat. That is resilience. And and not just in surviving these battles and then forcing what Germantown does, it forces Howe to keep his army inside Philadelphia. He can no longer move around the countryside. It's a thing that I think we we we don't see a lot when we look at just strict wins and losses. The French see a captured army in in New York, then they see a penned up army in Pennsylvania, and they're going, OK, you guys are demonstrating enough that

• 34:52Speaker 03

  you have you have the French crown who very much have a policy of we don't really want to get heavily involved, but we would really love to bleed our traditional enemy as dry as possible.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Was this just vengeance for the French and Indian War?

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Just French and Indian War. Dan, do you want to talk about how how long back?

• 35:13Dan Snow?

  I don't know if you know about this.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Striving.

• 35:15Dan Snow?

  We've got going on this island of ours, but we've got these neighbors called the French, and it goes back a fair way, actually. So, yeah, no, but.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Then sixty six and all that.

• 35:23Dan Snow?

  Yeah, well, exactly. So there's been, particularly since sixteen eighty eight, sixteen eighty nine, the Brits and the French have fought some, I've followed some historians who call it the Second Hundred Years' War. You get the Nine Years' War, you get the War of Spanish Succession.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:39Dan Snow?

  You get the War of Austrian Succession. You get the French Indian War, the Seven Years' War. You get the American Revolutionary War. Then you get the French Revolutionary War. Then you get the Napoleon War. And it ends, and it's really a battle in some ways for kind of global hegemony.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, can we just get to World War One and get it over with?

• 35:52Dan Snow?

  Exactly. Well, then we then we're buddies again. And it ends, I need not tell you, British cavalry watering their horses in the Seine and the Duke of Wellington bedding Napoleon's mistress. But anyway, so but it is, this is just part of this century-long struggle, and it goes on in India, and it goes on in the Caribbean, it goes on. And so so the French are looking to take on the Brits wherever the Brits show weakness. They'll fight the Brits in in Ireland, they'll fight the Brits in India, they'll fight the Brits in in West Africa. But at this time, it looks like the Brits are in a whole world of trouble on the east coast of of America, and the French are happy to send. Muskets and gold.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  And they're gonna bankrupt themselves doing it.

• 36:29Dan Snow?

  That is a problem for later. They will bankrupt.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  But you mentioned the Spanish, Jonathan. They get involved. Most Americans don't even know about that.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  They get involved. I mean, it's not to the same extent as, as the French. The, the Spanish have lost very heavily. They are going to eventually enter the war after France. On the condition of the famous Spanish condition always is, we want Gibraltar back.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  You know, they're not gonna get it. It, Spain's contribution to the war is rocky. They demonstrate that they are still a great, a, a part of the great power competition. They are still part of this great game, as it will later be called. But they don't demonstrate that they have this political will to openly support the Americans other than, beyond sending some, some arms, a little bit of money, and then a small expedition through, through Florida and modern day Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. And, and so what you, what you really have with Spain is, it's another fleet.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Um, the addition of Spain's fleet into the war, and then also the Dutch, and the Dutch come in heavily with money.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  The Dutch are floating massive loans to the Americans, which will be nice enough to, to, to sort of overlook the fact that we absolutely screw them on the back end and don't pay anybody back. But this is, again, these are items for the future, but for, from the British perspective, you now have, I think, probably what no one in Britain wanted in seventeen seventy-five, which is all of a sudden, you have a world war again. You just had a world war. You, you're trying to figure out how to pay for the last one. Because, you know, William Pitt wrote a blank check to the colonies to do whatever they wanted, and they, and they took him at his word, and they did. And now here we are with massive British debt and another war.

• 38:10Dan Snow?

  And the worst thing about a world war is you're fighting without allies. And Winston Churchill said, the only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without allies. And, and so this is, for all that my fellow Brits, and we like to talk about the British Empire, we like to talk about great British military successes. Nearly all of them have been achieved. The big, the big important ones have been achieved as part of coalitions, big, big coalitions. Uh, it's been, that's been Britain's secret sauce. Uh, and now, and their most unsuccessful war in British history is the American Revolutionary War, when it's fighting absolutely on its own.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Right. So we're moving on from the Declaration of Independence as a pivotal moment which really demonstrated the resilience of the colonists, willing to fight through failure. I'm hearing from you, Saratoga is probably the biggest pivotal moment, we'll have to make this decision at the end, but definitely a huge moment of pivot when not only have the Americans won the battle, but also they've brought in foreign powers to fight them. They've made allies. So let's again move forward towards the end here, towards Yorktown. With French support and money, it feels very much that by 1781, victory for the Americans is in the cards. Our final turning point comes with the last showdown. Yorktown is under siege from September to October 1781.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Washington's regiments, joined by 4,500 French soldiers under the Marquis de Lafayette. Up to 17,000 on land, Yorktown is under siege from September to October 1781. Washington's regiments are joined by 4,500 French soldiers under the Marquis de Lafayette. That makes a total of 17,000 on land, faced off against 8,000 Brits. French Admiral Francois Joseph de Grasse and his fleet are in the Chesapeake, preventing the escape of Cornwallis and the British Army, and reinforcement by the British Navy. On September the 5th, the French take a victory over a British fleet in the Battle of Chesapeake. And it's clear Cornwallis's troops have no chance of escape or reinforcement.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Troops suffer from disease, dwindling supplies and casualties. On October 17th, the drummer and officer signal surrender. Negotiations take place on the 18th, and the official surrender ceremony occurs on the 19th. Cornwallis does not attend, citing illness. So British Brigadier General Charles O'Hara surrenders to Washington's second-in-command, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, by handing him his sword. This is such a pivotal battle in the revolution. Dan, what state are things in for the British at the time of Yorktown?

• 40:41Dan Snow?

  Well, it's just this, it's this old problem, which is the British Army can move around America, sometimes carried by ships, this overwhelming maritime strength. Other times they'll march, they'll march up through the Carolinas into Virginia. But the problem is that every time they go somewhere and they liberate somewhere, or they, or they, they get the Union flags out, as Jonathan says, and the crowds all come out and say, "Okay, fine, King George, we're back." The minute they leave town, like the Vietcong in Vietnam, or like the Taliban, I guess, in Afghanistan, the patriots, the rebels, just drift back in and reassert their control. So, so you end up with marching this big distance, British armies march all the way into this part of Virginia, and they haven't got anything to show for it. What they then try and do is they do whatever British, they do exactly what British armies have always done.

• 41:26Dan Snow?

  Just look towards the coast and be like, "Where the hell's the navy? We need, we need the navy here." So, and they do that, they get Yorktown's on the coast and they build a

• 41:35Speaker 02

  And they're not going to get the navy because of the French.

• 41:37Dan Snow?

  Well, this is the killer fact, Don, this is an absolute disaster. So they've, they've built this before and they settle down, normal, normal service resumed. Here we are on the coast, we get the navy bringing supplies in, food, more powder and shot and reinforcements. Then the unimaginable happens. The unimaginable, I mean, this is very difficult for me to talk about really, but the French Navy turn up in, in an astonishing and, and lucky and skillful and remarkable bit of coordination that crosses two continents and several months. The French Navy turn up in force, there's an inconclusive battle off in the Chesapeake Bay. The British retreat afterwards to go and repair their ships. So it's actually defeat for the British. And for the, you know, this, this astonishing new experience for the Brits, they find themselves sandwiched between an enemy force, Americans and the French,

• 42:22Dan Snow?

  who are besieging them in Yorktown, and a French fleet out at sea. And the Brits do not like this situation.

• 42:31Dan Snow?

  You're listening to American Revolution on Dan Snow's History, more coming up after this.

• 42:42Speaker 01

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• 44:09Speaker 02

  Jonathan, tell me about the American side of things at this point. Washington is, what is his aims, his strategic goals?

• 44:16Speaker 03

  So he's trying to coordinate with this, you know, he's trying to take advantage of this new alliance, the 1778 Treaty of Alliance and Amity with France, to be able to make a joint, a joint combined attack. What he would really love to do, in his heart of hearts, is seize New York, get that festering insult away from him, get this thing that he's been carrying around with him, the loss of New York, I think really, he really, really feels. And, and there's been attempts to coordinate continental forces with the French Army and Navy. You've got an attempt in Savannah that ends terribly. You've got an attempt in, in Rhode Island that doesn't end well. You have a lot of failure. And I think that's important to emphasize is you have a lot of failure, a lot of disappointment, and a lot of mistrust building on both sides.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  From the American side, I don't know if we can trust these guys to show up when we need them. And from the French side is, I don't know if we can trust these guys to fight when we show up. There's, so there's, there's a lot of tension that is going into this relationship, which makes 1781 that much more impressive. What the Americans are dealing with fundamentally is honestly a gift, which is that in 1778, the British turned to the South. They, they say, we're writing off the main colonies, we're writing off doing that. We'll do some stuff there. We'll keep our main forces in New York, but we are going to attempt a Southern strategy. We are going to win the American South. We will, we will have a limited victory. We will keep the South, the more lucrative colonies.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  And, you know, those dumb rebels, they, in the North, they're intractable and they're poor and cheap anyway, those dumb Yankees. We can live without them. And this is a gift because this is where British manpower is pouring into. And they're able to combat this with a relatively, the Continentals and the militia, the state troops are able to combat this with a relatively low number of troops. So by 1781, this, this weird assortment of Continentals and militia in the Carolinas have essentially caused Cornwallis to give up in frustration, to throw his hands up and say, I, I've beaten you everywhere. In every battle, I pursue you, I keep having to cross rivers and I'm running out of boats and my men are, are destroyed, my horses are starving.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  I have to go refit in Yorktown where he even, before that, he attempts to destroy a force of about 4,000 under Lafayette, which eventually ends up pinning him on the Virginia Peninsula. And so this, this incredible combination of British strategic mishap, I would say, or unable to read the situation properly, and this unparalleled moment in space and time where you get Washington, Rochambeau, and de Gras able to actually come, and the Comte de Stade, able to, to come to the table and say, yes, we are going to attempt this to, to move across an entire multiple theaters of war to converge in one space and time.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Most of the troops for the, I think a lot of people don't understand, most of the continental and French troops, almost all of them, for the siege of Yorktown began in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and New York.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  There's only a couple thousand under Lafayette that have been sort of scrapping it out in Virginia. And so this is just this incredible feat to concentrate rapidly at that right moment, as Dan said, at this moment where the British are going, oh, wait, we don't have naval superiority. What is that? I mean, that's like telling the American army today that, hey, you have to fight without air superiority.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  That that causes everything in my body to clinch up and this would want to hide in the little hole.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Dan, could they have come back after Yorktown, do you think, the British? Yeah.

• 47:44Dan Snow?

  No.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  No?

• 47:45Dan Snow?

  No, they, the Yorktown was a catastrophe, another army, a second entire army surrenders just utterly, you know, something like eight thousand men. It would involve raising another army to send. And I think people had, they'd worked out that these armies, they had nothing, it wasn't, it wasn't like, oh, we were doing so well before the army got captured. But it's just stalemate at best. You're fighting a global war, that the Spanish, you know, the other interests around the world you want to defend. And the British have no option, you know, the British, British credit is under attack, the British government is, is, you know, Britain is still, it's, you know, it's not a dictatorship. The British government is very shaky at this point, that Parliament are doubting the strategy. So, so Lord North, who's the Prime Minister, his grip on power will soon come to an end.

• 48:30Dan Snow?

  We're going to have three Prime Ministers in one year after this, if you can believe that, which we only have in the gravest of crises like a couple of years ago. And so Yorktown is a symptom of just a gigantic failure to come to terms with how to pay for, how to bring the Americans back to their obedience. And in a way, Yorktown puts the Brits out of their misery because it's so decisive and that they just go, look, we can't do this.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  It's really a statement on how overextended they were.

• 48:55Dan Snow?

  Yeah. We haven't got the men, we can't send another army.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 48:59Dan Snow?

  So we can keep this going and sit in New York and sort of just exchange potshots with the Americans. Or we can just cut this gaudy knot, we can cut off this diseased limb. And we can get back to what we want to do, which is defend our valuable sugar producing islands in the Caribbean. From the French, defend our possessions in India, defend our Gibraltar, all those kinds of things. And yep, it's super sad. We, you know, the Brits, they've secured Canada. So, you know, maybe they just, maybe they lose the 13 colonies.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  You've got the lumber.

• 49:27Dan Snow?

  They got the lumber in Canada. You know, what's the best that's gonna happen? Those little 13 colonies.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  And maple syrup.

• 49:31Dan Snow?

  Well, you tell me exactly what's up. And beaver skin hats.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:34Dan Snow?

  You know, I'm sure those little 13 colonies, they'll never come to an end. They'll fight, they'll squabble amongst themselves. They'll be back, they'll be back.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah. Surprisingly, sporadic fighting does continue after this. There's a couple of years here until this Treaty of Paris is signed. Jonathan, it seems interesting to me as Americans, we celebrate the Fourth of July, the Declaration of Independence. But we don't really celebrate the Treaty of Paris. It's weird, isn't it? Third of September.

• 49:57Speaker 03

  I mean, it's weird only from the perspective of actually asking Americans to look with a realistic light upon their own history.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  What's more popular? Oh, well, we manifested our own destiny into existence. To, you know, to borrow a phrase that will come later on in American politics, but this idea that, oh, well, we did it on our own, we willed it to happen. It's like Lexington and Concord. It was the embattled farmer who stood up and made this happen. No, it was fought as all American wars are always fought and won, which is with allies, which is very difficult for us to admit. It is fought by a mixture of professional forces and part-time forces. Today, we'd have the regular army, army reserve, the army, national guard. And it's fought by drafting individuals. So by the end, the Continental Army is drafting people. It is forced service.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Because that is how you keep armies in the field and how you win wars. All of this doesn't make for really good hand clapping, you know, yay, America. Feelings. And so, yes, we celebrate the July 4th because otherwise we would have to say, yeah, we owe our independence probably mostly to France.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  We are very good storytellers, very good at building our own mythology to this day, as a matter of fact. Dan, on this side of things, what's the, there's a whole empire to build. I mean,

• 51:16Dan Snow?

  I know.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  You've got plenty of work going on over here.

• 51:19Dan Snow?

  Speaking of stories, this is the strange thing about the American Revolutionary War. It's the most disastrous war in British history. And what happens over the next forty years is one of the most gigantic expansions of British power in the history of the world. It's very weird. So there's an industrial revolution happening in Britain, which will give it huge advantages going into the nineteenth century. So its economy is absolutely, it's on fire. It's going through one of the most important events in human history. This industrial revolution starts in little old England. And so although the loss of America is a catastrophe, and although there's a world in which Britain, North America go on being one great big imperial state and maybe fused together as nation states, some states in the future, that's a very interesting world,

• 51:59Dan Snow?

  but it's not the one we live in. But what does happen is chaos in Britain, political chaos, huge existential crisis. What are we doing here? We've got no money. It's a disaster. But under the surface, there's enormous dynamism and excitement going on with Britain's economy. Amazing things are happening. And then France totally implodes.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 52:21Dan Snow?

  The French Revolution happens, as you pointed out, often to a large extent because of the vast amount of money they spend in the American Revolutionary War, and then the money they spend after that, still trying to catch up with the British fleet. And so Britain is drawn into this enormous war in Europe, these enormous wars in Europe, perhaps a little bit like World War Two in the US and sort of lifting the Americans out of the remains of the Depression. Those actually, although they're very tough wars and some very tough years in those wars, they proved to have a kind of galvanizing effect on Britain. Britain ends up conquering other colonies around the world, places like Southern Africa and extends its possessions in India. So Britain, it's strange. It's

• 53:02Dan Snow?

  a disaster, but it doesn't seem to halt the trajectory of Britain into what will become a great global empire.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  There it goes. Works out pretty well for them. So we've done a whirlwind tour of the biggest pivotal moments of this war. There are many, many in between. But Jonathan, I think it's fair to say, well, I'll leave this to you. What do you, as an American, think was the pivotal moment when the colonials imagined that they'd won this war? When did it happen? When did things turn?

• 53:29Speaker 03

  As to when they imagine they won the war, I don't know if they actually do imagine it until 1783. Washington himself is in disbelief that there will be any end to the hostile. I mean, he is up, he is ready for the assault on New York up until the point where the British troops leave in 1783. There's this intense idea that the war cannot surely be over, that they could not have actually done this. From a, you know, stepping back a geopolitical perspective, highly unpopular when we want to look at the patriotic idea of, of the revolution. I mean, I do think that when Britain loses the war is 1778. When it, when it admits that it cannot control the northern most populous, most rebellious colonies.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  And that that is where they, they lose their way, so to speak. I mean, they give up, they essentially say, we are willing to achieve a very limited victory or a limited loss. Not unlike Vietnam, where Dan was talking about how the British Empire massively expands following this huge loss. Following Vietnam, the United States sees itself as the victor of the Cold War, sees itself coming out as the lone superpower. And then, of course, there's the big question that I think Britain also had in the 18, mid 1800s is what do you do when you're the lone superpower? And how do you use that power? Those are for future podcasts, but I, I don't think that there's a simple answer. I would like to say it was Saratoga, that would be the easy answer.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  But I honestly don't think for the colonists themselves, I don't think that there was a time when they knew that they had won.

• 55:01Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Until it was actually done.

• 55:03Dan Snow?

  And then they didn't know how big they'd won because the Brits make a really extraordinary decision, which is that they don't just give these 13 colonies this independence. They don't agree, accept 13 colonies independence. They give them a whole ton of territory that the Americans didn't even know they were asking for.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:19Dan Snow?

  And, and that is maybe a different podcast, but they give them the whole of the Midwest.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:23Dan Snow?

  The whole of Mississippi, Ohio valleys. So, so that these 13 colonies we talk about, suddenly it is the eastern chunk of what is now the US. So overnight, the, the peace treaty is as big a victory for the Americans as any of these ones we discussed.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Although it's, it's almost a Trojan horse too, because in it lies the seeds of the near destruction of this new republic. That is going to get, you know, sorted out with a constitution. But prior to that, you've got to imagine the Brits sitting back there going, yeah, you thought it was real easy to govern? Yeah, you try dealing with you assholes.

• 56:00Dan Snow?

  Well, there you have it, folks. Little introduction to the American Revolutionary War. We will be looking at this history much, much more over the coming months and years as those 250th anniversaries crop up. If you'd like us to cover something in particular with Jonathan, or Don, or by myself, just send us an email. You can find the address in the show notes. And of course, if you want more American history, you have to head over to American History Hit, hosted by Don Wildman. It's available wherever you get your podcasts. They cover everything from the Mayflower to the Vietnam War, from the Comanche to the 20th century. Go check it out, folks. Bye-bye for now.

• 56:45Speaker 06

  Pessimism. It's never going to improve a disconnected healthcare system.

• 56:49Speaker 05

  Next.

• 56:50Speaker 06

  So what will? At Optum, we're working every day to connect primary, specialty, and pharmacy care, and help lower prescription costs. Will we fix it all overnight? No. But we'll wake up trying, again and again, until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at optum.com.

• 57:15Speaker 01

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• 57:57Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 58:06Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.