The Three-Week Siege of October 1781 at Which a French Fleet, a French Army, and a Combined American-French Land Force Captured an Entire British Army and Effectively Ended the American Revolution

The American Revolutionary War had been running for six years by autumn 1781. The British military strategy under the Lord George Germain administration had progressively shifted from the original northern theatre (which had failed at the 1777 Battle of Saratoga) to a southern strategy intended to separate the southern colonies from the New England core of the revolution.

By summer 1781 the southern strategy had failed too. The British southern army under Lord Charles Cornwallis had retreated from the Carolinas after a series of costly engagements (Cowpens, Guilford Court House, Hobkirk’s Hill) and had moved north into Virginia. Cornwallis established a defensive position at Yorktown on the Chesapeake Bay in early August 1781, expecting naval resupply and seaborne extraction if needed.

The Continental commander George Washington and the French expeditionary commander Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau — whose 5,500-man French army had been camped at Newport, Rhode Island, since July 1780 — made the strategic decision in August 1781 to march the entire combined army south to trap Cornwallis at Yorktown.

The fleet

The decisive Franco-American operational coordination was the timing of the French Atlantic fleet’s arrival. The French Admiral François Joseph Paul, comte de Grasse, had been operating in the Caribbean. Washington and Rochambeau negotiated de Grasse’s agreement to commit the fleet to blockade the Chesapeake Bay at the moment the land army arrived at Yorktown.

De Grasse arrived in the Chesapeake on 30 August 1781 with 28 ships of the line. The British relief fleet under Sir Thomas Graves engaged him at the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September 1781. The engagement was indecisive in direct casualties but decisive in operational outcome — the British fleet withdrew north to New York for repairs, leaving the French fleet in unchallenged control of the Chesapeake. Cornwallis could not now be extracted by sea.

The siege

The combined Franco-American army of approximately 17,000 arrived outside Yorktown on 28 September 1781. Cornwallis’s garrison was approximately 7,000. The siege ran three weeks.

The engineering work was commanded by the French engineer Louis Lebègue Duportail. The first parallel trench was completed on 6 October. The second parallel — within 280 metres of the British works — was completed on 14 October after the capture of British redoubts 9 and 10 (the Redoubt 10 capture was commanded by the Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who led the American infantry assault personally).

The siege artillery in the second parallel could reach every point in the British position. The bombardment from 14-17 October destroyed most of the British defensive positions. Cornwallis attempted a breakout across the York River on the night of 16-17 October; the breakout was driven back by storms.

On the morning of 17 October 1781 Cornwallis sent a drummer with a white flag to Washington’s lines proposing surrender terms. The negotiations took two days. The surrender was formal on 19 October 1781.

The surrender ceremony

The surrender ceremony was held on the afternoon of 19 October. Approximately 7,000 British and German soldiers marched out between the American and French lines and laid down their weapons. Cornwallis himself did not attend; he pleaded illness. His deputy Brigadier-General Charles O’Hara attempted to surrender Cornwallis’s sword to the French commander Rochambeau (a deliberate slight to Washington); Rochambeau refused and directed O’Hara to Washington; Washington directed O’Hara to his American deputy Benjamin Lincoln (who had himself surrendered at Charleston in 1780 and was being given the reciprocal honour). O’Hara surrendered the sword to Lincoln.

The British band reportedly played the tune The World Turned Upside Down during the ceremony. The story is attested in American memoirs from the 1820s and may be accurate; the direct contemporary evidence is unclear.

What followed

The British Prime Minister Lord North received the news of Yorktown in London on 25 November 1781. He reportedly responded “Oh God, it is all over.” His government fell within three months. The new Rockingham administration opened peace negotiations.

The Treaty of Paris of 3 September 1783 recognised American independence. The 13 colonies became the United States of America. Britain retained Canada, the West Indies, and strategic Atlantic posts.

Cornwallis recovered from the Yorktown defeat in career terms. He was appointed Governor-General of India in 1786 and commanded the British forces in the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789-1792) — the successful war against the Tipu Sultan that the earlier 1780-1784 Second Anglo-Mysore War had lost. He died in India in October 1805, aged 66.