User blog comment:Cyrice1/Stormcloaks or Imperials/@comment-4988560-20120711001309/@comment-1080767-20120711071449

No, it's not like Britian and America because Britain wasn't a crumbling Empire that America was relying on to stay in one piece in order to repel an invasion with a rivalling Empire. And this so-called "bribery" as you put it was a means of making it better for the Jarls to accept. It was so that they could at least have something to make up for an inevitable degradation of their Empire because they lost the war. They almost lost the capital of the Empire and the centre of Tamriel; in fact they did, and used their resources in a last-ditch effort to take it back and end the war there before they could lose it again. The Imperial army drove them back out of Cyrodiil and reclaimed the central province. The front lines never came to Skyrim, so many of those Stormcloaks who aren't veterans of the Great War would think that they could've kept fighting, because they remained peacefully sitting in their homes living life the good Nord way, while magickal fires and mists of mixed blood and mutilated corpses were strewn across battlefields miles away. Ulfric Stormcloak himself was captured for a portion of the war, the part where the Empire began losing, and he was fed with lies as the Thalmor tortured and interrogated him for information. If the war continued, the Imperials would've been defeated and Cyrodiil would've been Aldmeri. From there, they could attack any province they wanted from whichever direction and there would be no Empire at that point to unite them.