British forces surrendered at Yorktown

By the autumn of 1781, Lord Cornwallis had marched his British army into Yorktown, Virginia, expecting resupply by sea. Instead a French fleet sealed off the Chesapeake, while George Washington and the French commander Rochambeau closed in by land. The siege tightened; the bombardment was relentless.

Cornwallis asked for terms on October 17. Two days later, on October 19, 1781, the Articles of Capitulation were signed and roughly 7,000 British and Hessian troops marched out to lay down their arms between lines of American and French soldiers.

Cornwallis pleaded illness and stayed away, sending General O’Hara in his place. Washington, refusing to accept a deputy’s sword himself, had General Benjamin Lincoln receive it.

It was the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.

Fighting did not stop everywhere overnight, but the political shock in London was decisive. The defeat collapsed support for the war and opened the road to the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which recognized American independence.