Washington had favoured an attack on New York, but news that the French admiral de Grasse would bring his West Indies fleet to Chesapeake Bay changed everything. The allied armies marched south from the Hudson, and on September 28, 1781, they closed on Yorktown. De Grasse's fleet had already driven off a British relief squadron at the Battle of the Chesapeake, so Cornwallis could not escape or be reinforced by sea.
Cornwallis had fortified Yorktown on orders from his superior, Henry Clinton, expecting the Royal Navy to control the coast. Instead, the French navy did. While Lafayette's small Continental force shadowed Cornwallis in Virginia, Washington and Rochambeau deceived the British into believing New York was their target, then marched hundreds of miles south, passing through Philadelphia in early September.
Once the allies arrived, they dug siege lines, bringing heavy guns landed from de Grasse's ships. Clinton wrote promising a relief force of 5,000 men, and Cornwallis pulled back to the earthworks close around the town to wait for it. The relief never arrived in time. The allied bombardment opened in October, two British redoubts were stormed on October 14, and the Franco-American artillery moved ever closer.
Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, and more than 7,000 British soldiers were taken prisoner. It was the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War, and it led Britain to open the negotiations that ended in American independence.
Key people: George Washington, Comte de Rochambeau, Charles Cornwallis