VA, USA
Cornwallis Fortifies Yorktown
August 1, 1781
In August 1781, General Cornwallis moved his army to Yorktown and began constructing an extensive defensive perimeter on the orders of General Henry Clinton in New York, who wanted a deep-water anchorage for the Royal Navy in the Chesapeake. Cornwallis chose the position reluctantly, recognizing that the bluffs above the York River were defensible but that the town was vulnerable to siege if the British navy could not maintain control of the Chesapeake.
The fortifications Cornwallis built were substantial: a semicircular line of redoubts, batteries, and connecting trenches stretching from the river above town to the river below. But they were designed to resist a coup de main, not a methodical siege by a numerically superior force with heavy French artillery. The decision to fortify Yorktown was the strategic miscalculation that ended the war.
People Involved
British general whose Southern campaign brought him to Yorktown, where his decision to fortify the town rather than retreat left him vulnerable to the combined French and American siege. His surrender on October 19, 1781, effectively ended the war. Cornwallis himself did not attend the surrender ceremony, claiming illness.