General Cornwalis arrived in Petersburg in May of 1781. After receiving conflicting instructions, Cornwalis went to Yorktown and began preparing a naval base there. General Washington moved south and, together with French ground and naval forces, surrounded the British army, forcing its surrender and effectively ending the war.

Multimedia Battle Presentation

On May 20, 1781, General Cornwalis and his army reached Petersburg, Virginia, and opened the last act of the war. Greeting Cornwalis was Arnold, with an army of 5,000. For a number of weeks, Cornwalis had received competing instructions on whether to send his men north or not. Finally, he was told that they were not needed. Instead, he decided to fortify Yorktown for use as a major naval base. At the moment, circumstances favored the French in their naval war with Great Britain, and they temporarily had control of the seas around America. Washington convinced the French that the time was ripe for a joint American-French land-naval expedition against Cornwalis in Virginia. Washington successfully moved his army to Virginia, while the French fleet, under Grasse, reluctantly agreed to a close offshore blockade. On September 28, the Americans and the French arrived at Yorktown. They brought a combined force of 14,000 men and began investing Yorktown. The American and French forces began a continuous bombardment of the British. Cornwalis took very little action in the first two weeks of the siege, expecting Clinton to save him. On October 14, the American and French troops made an initial assault on the British lines, forcing the British to fall back. It became clear to Cornwalis that his position was totally untenable. On October 16, Cornwalis made a desperate attempt to break out by sending some of his troops across the bay in small boats. A gale-force wind, however, scuttled that plan. On the 17th of October, Cornwalis sent an officer to negotiate the terms of his surrender. The war was effectively over. Hostilities would continue for another year but, for the second time, a British army in North America was forced to surrender.