How were the patriots, if we're going to call them that, how did they get access to the kinds of arms that they needed to effectively oppose essentially the largest empire in the world?

If you're looking at facing organized military resistance to what it is you want to accomplish, you need weapons in quantity.

And there's three basic ways you can do it.

Going from sort of least reliable to the most secure.

So the least reliable way to do it is to rely on foreign patronage.

you are useful to some other foreign power that has the capacity to mass produce and deliver these items to you, and they'll do it as long as you continue to be useful to them.

That's one way.

What were they and how did access to guns and ammunition secure the success of one but the failure of the other?