Well, Don, if the US had joined those wars a little earlier, instead of when their own interests dictated that they could put it off no longer, then there might not have been a need for such "debts". But perhaps we shouldn't get started on all that. Britain had a revolution, and a republic, quite some time before France, of course; though it was called a Commonwealth, and, regrettably, did not last.

I like France, and the French, and lived there for a while. I had a nice time. They didn't invent the hurdygurdy (and it isn't a Breton instrument, though it used to be played there a bit, as it was in many other places) but they did perfect the design when it was fashionable for a while at the French Court. The bellows-blown bagpipes were also developed for the benefit of French aristocrats, and without them we might have neither the Northumbrian nor the Uilleann (Union) pipes. Or, perhaps, some fine traditional songs such as The Outlandish Knight and The Ship in Distress, both of which probably came to Britain from, or via, France.