Siege of Yorktown
By the summer of 1781, Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis had moved his 8,000-man army to the Virginia coast, fortifying the tobacco port of Yorktown on the York River peninsula. Washington and French General Rochambeau, commanding a joint army near New York, received intelligence that Admiral de Grasse's fleet of 29 ships of the line was sailing north from the Caribbean and would be available in the Chesapeake through October. The resulting convergence on Yorktown was the war's decisive manoeuvre. Washington and Rochambeau marched their 16,000 men from New York to Virginia in a deception operation that disguised their objective from Clinton in New York until they were beyond recall. On 5 September, de Grasse's fleet defeated the British fleet under Admiral Graves at the Battle of the Chesapeake — a brief engagement in which the British withdrew to New York for repairs, leaving Cornwallis without naval relief or evacuation. French and American forces completed their encirclement of Yorktown by late September; the formal siege opened on 6 October. On the night of 14 October, American and French troops stormed the two remaining outer redoubts in a coordinated night assault. On 19 October 1781, Cornwallis — pleading illness — sent General O'Hara to surrender his army to Rochambeau; Washington directed O'Hara to his own deputy Benjamin Lincoln. As 8,000 men marched out with their muskets inverted, the regimental bands played 'The World Turned Upside Down.'
- Year: 1781 CE
- Category: Military
