Siege of Yorktown

Background

After the Battle of Cowpens and a costly victory at Guilford Courthouse, Lord Cornwallis marched his army north into Virginia in the spring of 1781. His superior, Sir Henry Clinton in New York, ordered him to set up a fortified base where the Royal Navy could supply him. In August Cornwallis chose Yorktown, on the York River near Chesapeake Bay, with a smaller post across the river at Gloucester Point. The Marquis de Lafayette, with a small American force, watched him. That summer Washington learned that a large French fleet under the Comte de Grasse was sailing from the West Indies to the Chesapeake. Washington and the French general the Comte de Rochambeau left a small force to fool Clinton and marched their armies some 450 miles south from New York. On 5 September de Grasse's fleet fought the British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves off the Virginia Capes. The fighting was indecisive, but Graves sailed back to New York, and Cornwallis was cut off.

The Battle

By late September the allied army had gathered at Williamsburg, perhaps 17,000 to 19,000 men, about half of them French. On 28 September it marched to Yorktown, and Cornwallis gave up his outer defenses. The allies began a formal European siege, of the kind France had perfected. On the night of 6 October they dug the first parallel, a long trench about 600 yards from the British lines, and on 9 October the guns opened fire. French and American cannon and mortars pounded the British works, and heated shot set fire to British ships in the river. On 11 October the allies began a second parallel only about 300 yards away. Two British redoubts, numbers 9 and 10, blocked it. On the night of 14 October about 400 French troops stormed Redoubt 9, and about 400 Americans under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton took Redoubt 10, most of them with unloaded muskets and bayonets. Both fell within about half an hour. A British sortie on 16 October spiked a few guns but did little harm, and a plan to escape across the river to Gloucester that night was wrecked by a storm. On 17 October a British drummer beat for a parley. Terms were agreed, and on 19 October the British army marched out and laid down its arms.

Weapons

Yorktown was an artillery siege of the kind the French army knew well. French engineers directed the digging, and heavy siege guns and the Siege Mortar did most of the work. The infantry on both sides carried the smoothbore musket: the French Charleville Musket, also used by many Continentals, against the British Brown Bess Musket. The attack on the redoubts was a bayonet assault with the Socket Bayonet, and many officers on both sides wore the Smallsword.

Aftermath

Cornwallis did not attend the surrender, saying he was ill. His deputy, General Charles O'Hara, offered the sword to Rochambeau, who pointed him to Washington. Washington in turn directed him to his own second-in-command, Benjamin Lincoln. A British relief fleet reached the Chesapeake a few days too late. The war did not formally end for two more years, but the loss of a second whole army turned Parliament against it. Lord North's government fell in March 1782, and the Treaty of Paris of 1783 recognized the independence of the United States, ending the American Revolution.