Continental and French forces, having completed their first siege line around Yorktown, Virginia, opened a devastating artillery bombardment on Lord Cornwallis's trapped army. The barrage, sustained day and night, shattered British fortifications and morale alike, setting the stage for Cornwallis's surrender just over a week later on October 19.
General George Washington reportedly fired one of the first ceremonial shots himself, and for the next several days French and American gunners pounded the British works with such intensity that Cornwallis's own diary entries grew increasingly despairing, describing his position as 'so critical' that he doubted he could hold out.
The combined Franco-American force, numbering close to 19,000 against Cornwallis's roughly 9,000 exhausted troops, benefited enormously from French naval commander de Grasse's fleet, which had already sealed off any hope of British seaborne rescue or evacuation. Trapped between the guns and the sea, Cornwallis's men endured nightly artillery duels that reduced Yorktown's buildings to rubble.
The bombardment that began this day represented the culmination of a strategy years in the making, uniting French naval power with Washington's continental army in the one campaign where all the pieces finally fit. Nine days later, Cornwallis asked for terms, effectively ending major combat operations in the American Revolutionary War and setting in motion the negotiations that would produce the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
Key people: George Washington, Charles Cornwallis, Comte de Rochambeau