<P> The war was especially important for the prestige and pride of France, who was reinstated in the role of European arbiter . However, Great Britain, not France, became the leading trading partner of the United States . The French took pride in their cultural influence on the young country through the Enlightenment, as attested by Franklin and Jefferson, and as embodied in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the United States Constitution in 1787 . In turn, the Revolution influenced France . Liberal elites were satisfied by the victory but there were also some major consequences . European conservative Royalists and nobility had become nervous, and began to take measures in order to secure their positions . On May 22, 1781, the Decree of Ségur closed the military post offices of the upper rank to the common persons, reserving those ranks exclusively for the nobility . </P> <P> In all the French spent 1.3 billion livres to support the Americans directly, in addition to the money it spent fighting Britain on land and sea outside the U.S. </P> <P> France's status as a great modern power was re-affirmed by the war, but it was detrimental to the country's finances . Even though France's European territories were not affected, victory in a war against Great Britain with battles like the decisive siege of Yorktown in 1781 had a large financial cost which severely degraded fragile finances and increased the national debt . France gained little except that it weakened its main strategic enemy and gained a new, fast - growing ally that could become a welcome trading partner . However, the trade never materialized, and in 1793 the United States proclaimed its neutrality in the war between Great Britain and the French Republic . </P> <P> Some historians argue that France primarily sought revenge against Great Britain for the loss of territory in North America and India from the previous conflict . But Jonathan R. Dull states that France intervened because of dispassionate calculation, not because of Anglophobia or a desire to avenge the loss of Canada . </P>

Who went to france during the revolutionary war