Hopelessly trapped at Yorktown, Virginia, British General Lord Cornwallis surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a larger Franco-American force, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution.
Lord Cornwallis was one of the most capable British generals of the American Revolution. In 1776, he drove General George Washington’s Patriots forces out of New Jersey, and in 1780 he won a stunning victory over General Horatio Gates’ Patriot army at Camden, South Carolina. Cornwallis’ subsequent invasion of North Carolina was less successful, however, and in April 1781 he led his weary and battered troops toward the Virginia coast, where he could maintain seaborne lines of communication with the large British army of General Henry Clinton in New York City.
After conducting a series of raids against towns and plantations in Virginia, Cornwallis settled in the tidewater town of Yorktown in August. The British immediately began fortifying the town and the adjacent promontory of Gloucester Point across the York River.
General George Washington instructed the Marquis de Lafayette, who was in Virginia with an American army of around 5,000 men, to block Cornwallis’ escape from Yorktown by land. In the meantime, Washington’s 2,500 troops in New York were joined by a French army of 4,000 men under the Count de Rochambeau. Washington and Rochambeau made plans to attack Cornwallis with the assistance of a large French fleet under the Count de Grasse, and on August 21 they crossed the Hudson River to march south to Yorktown. Covering 200 miles in 15 days, the allied force reached the head of Chesapeake Bay in early September.
Meanwhile, a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves failed to break French naval superiority at the Battle of Virginia Capes on September 5, denying Cornwallis his expected reinforcements. Beginning September 14, de Grasse transported Washington and Rochambeau’s men down the Chesapeake to Virginia, where they joined Lafayette and completed the encirclement of Yorktown on September 28.
De Grasse landed another 3,000 French troops carried by his fleet. During the first two weeks of October, the 14,000 Franco-American troops gradually overcame the fortified British positions with the aid of de Grasse’s warships. A large British fleet carrying 7,000 men set out to rescue Cornwallis, but it was too late.
On October 19, General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate, and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders. As the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British bands played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.”
Although the war persisted on the high seas and in other theaters, the Patriot victory at Yorktown effectively ended fighting in the American colonies. Peace negotiations began in 1782, and on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, formally recognizing the United States as a free and independent nation after eight years of war.
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Biden would’ve discharged the whole army for not getting a flu shot.
Also … he would have demanded more homos be conscripted. Can’t win a war without Diversity … 50% fags, minimum.
In todays woke Army the troops could only march 2 miles…after that they get blisters from the high heels .
Actually, it was the French forces that won the battle.
Cornwallis was about to present his sword to the French Commander but was told to give it to George the incompetent Washington.
If it wasn’t for the French soldiers and French supplies, that little Rebellion would of been little more than a footnote in British history.
The French, for their efforts was bankrupt, leading to their own Revolution shortly after.
I wonder what the role the banking cartel had in all of that.
A little different take….. Unknown in today’s history books, the Revolution was a two front war, designed to squeeze the colony from both east and west. The Brit armies along the coast, and their paid allies the indians, raiding along the Blue Ridge. It was the mostly german-americans fighting along the coasts for Washington, and the Scots-Irish americans fighting along the blue ridge against the brit-backed indian tribes who were paid for scalps, just as the french had paid them during the french-indian war 20 years earlier. Thousands of scots-irish were massacred in their homes along the frontier, while Washington could hardly win a battle in years of fighting along the coast.
Finally, the scots-irish had enough, and banded together to form a 30k large militia force, and did just what they had done 20 years earlier, marched west across Pennsylvania all the way to the Ohio river valley where the indian tribes villages were, and burned all of the indians corn fields and villages. The indian raiding parties heard what was happening, and raced back to protect the villages and the all-important corn crop, as that was always their secret to not starving during the hard cold winters. It was too late. The militia had burned and destroyed everything, then built rafts, and floated them down the Ohio river to Kentucky, disembarked, and started moving east into the Carolinas. The “Over the Mountain men” came back from over the mountain for war. The battle of Kings Mountain and many others ensued, and the Brits were forced further and further north until they were pinned at Yorktown.
Good old George W heard what was happening, and showed up just in time to accept the sword of surrender. And that, is how the grouchy curmudgeonly, drinkin fightin pain-in-the-a** scots-irish saved America.