End of the Beginning: Yorktown
After years of war, the Continental Army dealt a death blow to the British at Yorktown, winning the last battle of the Revolutionary War.
After 1778, the main theater of war shifted to the south, as the British concentrated on trying to reestablish their control of that area. By 1781, the British were convinced that they could not accomplish this while Virginia continued to serve as a base for American military operations.
Consequently, in January 1781 Lt. Gen. Sir Henry Clinton sent the American turncoat, Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold , with 1,600 British troops to raid up the James River. Reinforcements followed, and by late May the British had accumulated a force of about 7,200 in Virginia, including 1,500 troops under Lt. Gen. Charles, 2nd Earl Cornwallis , who had come up from Wilmington, North Carolina.
Cornwallis assumed overall command of Crown forces in Virginia and in late May and early June led them on raids deep into the state. At first, only a smaller force under the French Maj. Gen. Marquis de Lafayette opposed him, but in mid-June the Americans received reinforcements under Brig. Gen. Anthony Wayne and Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben , drillmaster and inspector general of the Continental Army. Cornwallis then turned back to the coast to establish a base at Yorktown from which he could maintain sea communications with Clinton in New York. Hundreds of formerly enslaved African Americans accompanied Cornwallis’s army and provided labor for constructing fortifications at Yorktown.
Meanwhile, General George Washington tentatively prepared his army, recently reinforced by about 4,800 French troops under Lt. Gen. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, for an attack on New York. However, he received confirmation on 14 August that the French fleet commanded by V. Adm. François Joseph Paul, comte de Grasse, had departed the French West Indies with 3,000 troops aboard and would be available for operations in the Chesapeake Bay area until mid-October. Washington therefore determined to go to Virginia with a substantial part of his army, including the French troops under Rochambeau. The armies began crossing the Hudson River near Dobb’s Ferry on 17 August before marching south through New Jersey. Detachments of Continentals and state troops screened the allies’ movements, while strict security and active deception efforts kept the British ignorant of Washington’s intentions.
French ships defeat the British at the Battle of the Virginia Capes on 5 September, securing dominance over the southern Chesapeake
Grasse’s fleet arrived off Yorktown on 30 August, with 3,000 French soldiers to reinforce Lafayette, and on 5 September the French fought a naval engagement off the Virginia capes against a British fleet under R. Adm. Sir Thomas Graves. After several days of maneuvering at sea, Graves retired temporarily to New York for repairs, leaving the French fleet in control of Chesapeake Bay. These circumstances permitted Washington and Rochambeau to embark their forces in Maryland and sail via the Chesapeake and the James River to a point near Williamsburg, Virginia, between 14 and 24 September.
The allied army consisting of 8,845 Americans and 7,800 French moved forward on 28 September to begin siege operations against Yorktown.
A contemporary depiction of allied soldiers at Yorktown. From left to right, a black soldier of the First Rhode Island Regiment, a New England militiaman, a frontier rifleman, and a French officer.
For two weeks, the French and Americans dug trenches and moved their siege artillery into place. Cannons began bombarding British lines on 9 October.
Washington firing the first gun at Yorktown, at about 1700 on 9 October
On the moonless night of 14 October, the allies launched a series of successful surprise assaults on British defensive works and used the newly captured ground to construct artillery positions that would enable them to pulverize enemy lines, leaving the British soldiers in desperate straits.
Many were ill with malaria, preventing Cornwallis from mustering forces for a stronger counterattack. To reduce the burden on his food supplies, the British general evicted the hundreds of Black Americans, many suffering from smallpox, who had taken refuge within his lines.
Finally, before dawn on 16 October, Cornwallis made a desperate and ultimately futile effort to seize the allies’ new artillery positions. Later that day, bad weather upset British plans to ferry troops across the river for a breakout attempt at Gloucester Point. With the situation now hopeless, on 17 October the British began negotiating terms of surrender. Cornwallis gave up his entire command—around 8,000 soldiers—on 19 October.
(Left: French infantry arriving at Yorktown - Right: British troops marching out of Yorktown after surrendering
The victorious Washington at Yorktown with his generals and adjutants
Before their surrender, the British had lost 156 killed and 326 wounded; the Americans, 20 killed and 56 wounded; and the French, 52 killed and 134 wounded. British hopes for victory in America collapsed with Cornwallis’s defeat. The government of Prime Minister Frederick, Lord North, fell in March 1782, and the new cabinet opened direct negotiations with the American peace commissioners in Europe, ultimately leading to the end of the war.
