In the 1770s, the American Revolutionary War began with the passage of the Intolerable Acts, and the battles of Lexington and Concord, and Bunker Hill. Von Fersen told Beaumont that in France "it is the fashion to rhapsodise over the Americans' rebelliousness against England". France had officially declared war against her "natural enemy" (Great Britain) in February 1778, but it wasn't until the beginning of 1780 that a French contingent was finally being outfitted to fight with the rebels on North American soil.