Well said. These five are as cringe-worthy as you say. Being French as well as American, I hated the role of the one foppish French officer and the two seconds of naval gunfire. Without the French military, the American revolution would not have succeeded. In particular, if the French navy had not soundly beaten the English navy in Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis' army could have escaped. As it was, more French soldiers died at Yorktown than Americans.

Incidentally, the route the French followed from Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown is managed by the National Park Service as the"Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Road" or W3R, and readers might like to follow it. See https://w3r-us.org