Siege of Yorktown
Also called: Battle of Yorktown
While a French fleet sealed Chesapeake Bay, the American and French armies besieged Cornwallis at Yorktown; the surrender of some 8,000 British troops decided the war.
John Trumbull · Public domain · Source
After 1778 Britain turned to the South, where Loyalists were numerous, taking Savannah (1778) and Charleston (1780). Cornwallis swept through the Carolinas but was beaten at Kings Mountain and Cowpens, and in the summer of 1781 he dug in at Yorktown, Virginia, to be supplied by sea.
A French fleet under de Grasse came up from the West Indies and on 5 September drove off the British fleet at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, closing the sea. Meanwhile the American and French armies of Washington and Rochambeau marched nearly 700 km south from around New York and closed around Yorktown. After bombardment and the storming of redoubts, Cornwallis’s army of about 8,000 surrendered on 19 October. Hearing the news, Prime Minister Lord North is said to have exclaimed, “It is all over.”
