The Battle of Yorktown, 1781. The United States Secedes from the Crown. French Aid Pivotal.

The resounding American victory shattered British morale, forcing the English public to demand a change in leadership. The new government, facing the undeniable reality of defeat, initiated peace talks that ultimately secured independence for the United States.

Yorktown. September - October 17, 1781.
Franco-American Forces: 8,800 American Soldiers and 7,000 French Soldiers.
British Forces: 6,000 Soldiers, mixed between British and German (Hessian) Mercenaries.

Additional Reading and Research:

• Davis, Burke. The Campaign that Won America.
• Peckham, Howard. The War of Independence: A Military History.
• Chidsey, Donald. Victory at Yorktown.
• Hibbert, Christopher. Redcoats and Rebels.

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Transcript

With the thunderous American victory at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777, the fledgling United States clawed its way into the global arena, earning recognition from France. Soon after, Spain and the Netherlands followed suit, acknowledging the rising republic’s defiance. This recognition brought more than diplomatic gestures—it unlocked the vaults of European might. The alliance unleashed the supplies, weaponry, and men the rebels so desperately needed, empowering their armies to stand in force alongside the iron-willed resolve of leaders like George Washington, whose moral fortitude had held the revolution together.

By the summer of 1778, Washington’s army marched victoriously back into Philadelphia, the city abandoned by British forces as General William Howe, recalled to New York, prepared to make his final exit from the war’s leadership stage. In his place rose General Henry Clinton, a man whose arrival in command would shape the coming storms of the conflict. Clinton’s first steps as commander showed little hunger for relentless war. Rather than pursue the rebels with the hammer of British force, he entrenched himself in New York City, steeling its defenses for an American assault he believed to be inevitable—a battle Washington had no intention of giving him.

For two long years after Washington reclaimed Philadelphia, the war entered a tense lull. Skirmishes flickered like scattered embers, but neither side made a decisive move. By the summer of 1780, Clinton turned to treachery, attempting to weaponize Benedict Arnold’s betrayal to seize West Point, the vital American stronghold on the Hudson. The plot unraveled, and once again, Clinton retreated to the safety of fortifications rather than risk open combat. Meanwhile, Washington, ever the master of preparation, focused his energies on sharpening the edge of the Continental Army. With European arms and supplies now flowing, he turned his gaze to strategy, planning alongside the newly arrived French forces under the steady hand of the Comte de Rochambeau.

While Washington honed his forces in the northern strongholds of Rhode Island and Connecticut, Clinton, growing restless, sought a new course. Every British strategy thus far had shattered against the rock of American defiance. Neither Burgoyne’s disastrous 1777 campaign, which sought to cleave the colonies by controlling the Hudson, nor the treachery of Arnold, had delivered the British the victory they craved. Howe’s grand capture of Philadelphia, far from breaking the rebellion, had done little but displace the seat of revolution for a time. The heart of the uprising beat on. Since their early triumph in seizing New York City in the late summer of 1776, the British war effort had stalled, a mighty war machine grinding in place.

Clinton, seeing the futility of further northern campaigns, decided to shift the theater of war. He turned his gaze south, to lands where loyalist numbers promised an easier victory and where revolutionary passion burned with less intensity. His plan was to sweep through the southern states, rolling up the Revolution like a carpet, cutting off Washington’s forces from their southern allies, and strangling the rebellion into submission. To execute this bold southern gambit, Clinton dispatched Lord Charles Cornwallis to South Carolina in the summer of 1780. His mission: harness the loyalist strength in the Carolinas and Virginia and subdue the rebellion in the South.

Clinton believed the loyalists in these regions would eagerly swell the British ranks, making Cornwallis’s task a simple matter of occupation and order. With revolutionary forces spread thin in the South, British commanders expected little resistance, envisioning a swift and bloodless victory. Yet from the moment Cornwallis set foot on southern soil, the plan began to unravel. Though his initial landing near Charleston met little difficulty, and he forced General Benjamin Lincoln to surrender the city, the seeds of failure were already being sown. Charleston’s streets soon erupted in flames, a city ablaze with chaos. The cause remains a mystery, but it was clear that Cornwallis’s campaign had not begun with the triumph he had hoped for.

Cornwallis, defying Clinton’s orders, rejected the support of local loyalists, spurning their attempts to aid the British cause. Instead of strengthening his position, he began alienating the very people he had come to rely upon. Like Burgoyne before him, Cornwallis managed to turn potential allies into foes. His dismissive attitude and reliance on foreign troops—reminiscent of Burgoyne’s ill-fated use of Indians and Hessians—only deepened the resentment brewing among the local populace.

As Cornwallis dug in, the Revolutionary War flared back to life in the South. Guerrilla fighters—led by men like the elusive Francis Marion—struck with the precision of wolves, harassing British outposts and attacking supply lines in relentless ambushes. In fury, Cornwallis responded with brutal reprisals, unleashing his men to crush the resistance. But each act of vengeance only further alienated the local population, pushing potential loyalists deeper into the revolutionary cause.

Cornwallis, still convinced of his eventual victory, marched out of Charleston to subdue the Carolinas. Meanwhile, the Continental Congress sent Horatio Gates to halt him—but Gates’s overconfidence led to catastrophe. In the Battle of Camden, his forces crumbled under British fire, leaving the revolutionaries reeling. Sensing the gravity of the situation, Washington replaced Gates with the tactical genius of Nathaniel Greene, a commander whose mind was as sharp as his blade. Greene knew how to fight in the wild, unpredictable ways of guerrilla warfare—exactly what was needed to face Cornwallis.

Throughout the brutal winter of 1780-1781, the Southern landscape was littered with sporadic skirmishes and bloody firefights, yet neither army landed a decisive blow. It was a slow-burning conflict, waiting for the right spark to ignite. Cornwallis, isolated from his supply lines, turned to the countryside for sustenance. His arrogance—compounded by his ruthless use of Hessians to seize whatever they could—turned the local populace against him. The British forces became as unwelcome as any enemy invader. When Cornwallis finally called for loyalist reinforcements, the response was a trickle. The enthusiasm he had expected from the southern loyalists had withered under the weight of British mismanagement.

Meanwhile, Greene, ever mindful of his surroundings, sought to earn the goodwill of the locals. Though he could offer only the flimsy promises of IOUs from a struggling Continental Congress, his efforts stood in stark contrast to the British, who took what they needed by force. Greene’s treatment, though imperfect, kept the revolutionary cause alive. As British supplies dwindled, their once-proud army grew ragged, spirits frayed by hunger and exhaustion. Desperate to keep his men in fighting condition, Cornwallis marched to Wilmington, North Carolina, seeking to resupply and bolster his battered ranks.

Reinforced and resupplied, Cornwallis pushed north into Virginia in the spring of 1781. Benedict Arnold, the infamous turncoat, had been marauding there for months, yet his efforts brought the British little gain. After months of marching without decisive results, Cornwallis, now wearied by his fruitless efforts, moved toward the coast. Following Clinton’s orders, he began fortifying Yorktown, a position he believed the Royal Navy would reinforce—a coastal bastion nestled between the York and James Rivers, where Cornwallis hoped to hold his ground.

Washington, ever the strategist, had persuaded the cautious Rochambeau to back an audacious assault on New York City. His plan was bold—he would pin the Royal Navy in New York harbor using the might of the French fleet while the Franco-American army stormed Clinton’s defenses. But Rochambeau, wary of Washington’s northern gambit, voiced his disapproval to Admiral de Grasse, expressing a preference for operations in the South where the stakes were clearer, and success more attainable.

De Grasse, siding with Rochambeau, informed Washington that the French fleet would not venture beyond the Chesapeake Bay. With this new reality and reports of the British fortifications around New York, Washington wisely pivoted, conceding to Rochambeau’s strategy—a decisive campaign would now unfold in Virginia.

Washington had persuaded Rochambeau to turn his focus toward Virginia, and soon events unfolded in the South. While General Greene and Lafayette kept a close watch on Cornwallis, the French fleet under Comte de Grasse sailed north from the Caribbean, arriving at the Chesapeake Bay in late August. The arrival of the French fleet sealed Cornwallis’s fate, cutting off his escape route by sea. Clinton, still in New York, dismissed the early reports of the French fleet’s presence as rumors. By the time he realized their truth, it was too late. He hastily dispatched Admiral Thomas Graves to break through the French blockade, but when Graves arrived at the Chesapeake, he found himself facing twenty-four French ships of the line, outnumbering his own fleet of nineteen.

On September 5, the two fleets clashed, with de Grasse masterfully positioning his forces to deny the British access to the bay. After hours of cannon fire, the British suffered the worst of the damage. Though Graves lingered for a few days, he was forced to retreat to New York to repair his damaged ships. This withdrawal sealed Cornwallis’s isolation and the fate of his army. As Washington and Rochambeau linked up with Lafayette’s forces, their combined strength grew to nearly 16,000, more than twice the size of Cornwallis’s 7,000 troops. Together, they began the siege of Yorktown, steadily digging trenches that crept closer to the British defenses.

With superior numbers and artillery, the Franco-American forces bombarded Cornwallis’s army relentlessly. The British defenders, trapped behind their crumbling redoubts, could do little to fight back. In desperation, Cornwallis attempted a nighttime escape across the York River, hoping to slip past Washington’s lines, but bad weather thwarted his plans, scattering his boats and forcing him back to his besieged position.

On the night of October 15, two key British redoubts were stormed. The French captured the larger one after a fierce but brief fight, while the Americans, in a swift assault, took the smaller redoubt in just 10 minutes with minimal casualties. Cornwallis ordered a last-ditch raid on the newly established rebel positions, but it was too little, too late. By October 17, realizing the hopelessness of his situation, Cornwallis requested terms of surrender.

Cornwallis had held out in the belief that Clinton would send reinforcements from New York, but with the French fleet controlling the waters, such a relief was unlikely. When Admiral Graves finally set sail from New York on October 17, it was already too late. Cut off from supplies, unable to withstand the bombardment, and with winter approaching, Cornwallis had no choice but to surrender. He proposed a parole for himself and his men, promising not to take up arms in America again, but Washington demanded their surrender as prisoners of war.

On October 19, Cornwallis’s second-in-command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, led 6,000 British soldiers in surrender. O’Hara first attempted to hand over his sword to Rochambeau, hoping to surrender to a fellow European, but Rochambeau deferred to Washington. When O’Hara offered the sword to Washington, he was directed instead to General Benjamin Lincoln, Washington’s second-in-command, who formally accepted the British surrender. The humiliation of being defeated by colonial forces was palpable, and the British soldiers made their long march from Yorktown in defeat.

In the aftermath, Cornwallis and Clinton spent months blaming each other for the disaster, with Clinton’s career suffering the most. Cornwallis, however, returned to England and later redeemed himself with a successful campaign in India. For the British public, already weary of the war, Yorktown was the final blow. When news of the defeat reached London, it shattered the government, leading to its collapse and ushering in new leadership.

In the spring of 1782, the newly elected British government offered to negotiate peace, and by September, talks began in Paris. After a year of negotiations, the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, officially ending the war. Britain recognized American independence, and the new nation’s borders were established, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and from the Great Lakes to Florida. Spain, rewarded for its support during the war, regained Florida, which it had lost to the British in 1763.

Yorktown had brought an end to Britain’s colonial ambitions in America, though they retained control of Canada. At the negotiating table, the British tried to keep the land west of the Appalachian Mountains, which would have severely restricted American expansion, but they failed. Despite the peace, tensions between Britain and America lingered. The British were slow to abandon their forts in the Great Lakes region and continued to challenge American sovereignty on the high seas, sowing the seeds for future conflicts.

These unresolved issues eventually led to the War of 1812, a second round of hostilities between Britain and the United States. But after this second conflict, relations between the two nations eased considerably.

Had Cornwallis managed to escape Yorktown before Washington’s arrival, the war might have continued for a time, but the strain on Britain’s economy and the public’s growing weariness meant that a similar outcome was inevitable. Without Cornwallis’s defeat, however, America’s position in the peace negotiations would have been much weaker, and the terms of the treaty might have limited the nation’s growth for years to come.

The French contribution to the American victory at Yorktown cannot be overstated. King Louis XVI’s immense financial support for the American cause drained France’s treasury, and the revolutionary ideals embraced by French soldiers in America sowed the seeds of their own revolution in 1789. Though Louis succeeded in dealing a blow to his old enemy, England, he ultimately paid for his success with his throne and his life.

America, though, doesn't forget her friends. over a century later, amidst the tumult of world war one after their horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov Offensive, America entered the fray.  Upon arriving on the continent, and after a parade in a town in France, they approached a monument, the tomb of the man that convinced king Louis to join the American cause and their fight for freedom and Liberty.  After showing their reverence, they announced, "Lafayette, we are here."