Since the time of the fighting around Philadelphia and New Jersey in the summer of 1778, the Revolutionary War in the northern colonies had stalled. The British General Henry Clinton was holed up in New York—the only northern colonial city of any size that was still occupied by the English. Surrounding him was the Continental Army of General George Washington, based at West Point. In 1780 Washington had been joined by a contingent of 6000 French troops under Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, who had landed at Rhode Island. The only other sizable British force remaining in the colonies was that of General Charles Cornwallis, holed up in Wilmington NC after his defeats at Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse.
In the winter of 1780, as part of its strategic focus on the southern colonies, the British Army had begun to move into Virginia. This was the largest and richest of the American colonies, and was supplying most of the men and funding for the Continental Congress. By holding Virginia, Clinton hoped he could cut off some of the support for the rebels, and also separate the northern colonies from the south. This would allow Cornwallis to land in Georgia, move through the Carolinas and hook up with him in Virginia, after which their combined army could move to Philadelphia and Boston, and then take on Washington and Rochambeau at New York.
In December 1780, a force of 1500 redcoats was landed at Portsmouth VA under the command of General Benedict Arnold—the former colonial hero of Saratoga who had turned to the British. Arnold began a series of raids in the surrounding countryside. A French fleet under Admiral Destouches was sent to carry 1200 troops under the Marquis de Lafayette to confront Arnold, but the British Navy turned back the French ships. Arnold was then reinforced in Virginia by another 2000 men, and General William Phillips took over command.
By this time, Cornwallis had been forced to retreat from Cowpens to Wilmington NC to keep his supply lines open, and now he had to make a strategic decision. Contrary to British hopes at the beginning of the southern campaign, the local people had not flocked to the Loyalist banner, and his remaining forces were no longer enough to hold the Carolinas. In any case, Cornwallis had concluded, it was impossible to defeat the colonials here unless their supply sources in Virginia were also removed.
And so, without orders from General Clinton, Cornwallis decided to abandon the Carolinas and move his troops into Virginia where they would join up with those of General Phillips. After a sea voyage and an overland march, Cornwallis arrived in Petersburg VA, near Richmond, and, after Arnold returned to New York and Phillips died of a fever, assumed command. He had a total of 8000 troops, including some 2000 Hessians.
His first move was against Lafayette, who was camped nearby with 3000 French and American troops. As Cornwallis approached, however, Lafayette decided to withdraw, pulling back and linking up with colonial garrisons commanded by Generals “Mad Anthony” Wayne and Friedrich Von Steuben. Cornwallis established a base nearby in Williamsburg VA.
By this time, though, General Clinton was becoming worried by the French fleet in the Caribbean, which presented a threat to the British supply lines. In a series of orders, he sent Cornwallis to Yorktown, on the Chesapeake Bay, and dispatched engineers to begin constructing a port at which Royal Navy ships could deliver troops and protect the naval supply routes. It turned out to be a fatal move.
In New York, Generals Washington and Rochambeau had been planning a campaign to take New York City during the summer, but when word came that Cornwallis was immobilized in Yorktown, it presented a tempting target. The decision was sealed when the French Admiral Francois de Grasse agreed to move part of his fleet to Virginia, but only until October. (The Spanish, who had also entered the war against England, agreed to deploy their own fleet to protect the French possessions in the Caribbean, freeing up de Grasse’s ships). The colonials and the French would, in a joint operation commanded by Washington, move their available forces to Yorktown.
Washington set out from New York on August 19 and reached Philadelphia by mid-September. De Grasse’s French fleet delivered reinforcements to Lafayette’s army, then blockaded Chesapeake Bay to cut off Cornwallis’s supply lines. In the most crucial action of the campaign, a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves attempted to break through the French blockade and re-establish contact with Cornwallis, but in the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on September 5, de Grasse defeated Graves and forced the British to sail back to New York. In this naval engagement, it could be argued, the French had won the American Revolutionary War. After the British fleet retreated, the French ships sailed to Philadelphia to pick up Washington’s Continental Army and Rochambeau’s troops and bring them to Virginia. They arrived at Williamsburg on September 14 and marched to Yorktown by September 28.
Immediately, the combined French and American forces, totaling almost 20,000 men, began digging siege trenches. It was the first time since the disaster at Savannah that French and American combat forces operated directly together, but this time the work went smoothly. The French had extensive experience with European-style sieges, and their engineers and sappers took charge of the operation.
Cornwallis had surrounded the town with a series of cannon redoubts, but now, outnumbered and surrounded, he realized that he did not have enough men to hold them all. Instead, he pulled back from his outer positions and concentrated his forces at his shorter inner line, anchored by Redoubt 9, Redoubt 10, and the Fusiliers Redoubt.
The French siege work was slow but steady. They dug a ring of protective trenches around Yorktown. By October 9, Washington’s artillery was in range and began bombarding Yorktown. Meanwhile, the engineers inched forward through “zigzag” ditches, thus working their way ever closer and closer, and work was begun on another line of siege trenches, just out of British musket range. Once it was finished, Cornwallis realized, the colonials and their French supporters would move up their cannons and blow his defenses to pieces.
On October 14, the British Redoubts 9 and 10, the only remaining obstacles to the second siege line, were captured in a night attack by French and American troops. In desperation, Cornwallis first tried to launch an assault to capture the siege guns that were pounding his position, and, when that failed, tried to break through the line of French and American troops and open a pathway for a retreat across the York River. With these defeats, all hope ended, and Cornwallis knew it was all over. On October 17, a British drummer approached the American trenches with a white flag.
The following day, representatives from the British, American and French armies met at the nearby Moore House and worked out the terms. At the formal surrender ceremony the next day, Cornwallis pleaded that he was too sick to attend, and sent his second-in-command instead. Still refusing to acknowledge the American independence, British General Charles O’Hara tried to present Cornwallis’s sword to the French General Rochambeau: Rochambeau in turn refused to accept it, and pointed to General Washington. But Washington, miffed by Cornwallis’s absence, also refused to accept it, and turned to his own second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln. According to legend, which is probably apocryphal, as the British troops marched out of Yorktown to stack their muskets in surrender, the regimental band played a popular tune of the day, “The World’s Turned Upside Down”.
In 1930, the Yorktown battlefield was incorporated into the Colonial History National Monument under management of the National Park Service (which also includes the Jamestown settlement). The Yorktown Cemetery was transferred from the Defense Department to the NPS three years later, and in 1936 the expanded Monument became a National Historical Park. There is a Visitors Center and a seven-mile driving tour that covers the battlefield, including the Nelson House where Cornwallis stayed during the battle, and the Moore House where the surrender negotiations took place. The siege trenches and earthworks were restored in 1976.
Some photos from a visit.