what caused the british to lose the battle at yorktown
When British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and his ground forces surrendered to General George Washington'southward American forcefulness and its French allies at the Battle of Yorktown on Oct 19, 1781, it was more just military win. The event in Yorktown, Virginia marked the decision of the last major boxing of the American Revolution and the beginning of a new nation's independence. Information technology also cemented Washington'due south reputation every bit a great leader and eventual ballot as first president of the U.s.a..
"Washington's fame grew to international proportions having wrested such an impossible victory," according to the Washington Library, "interrupting his much desired Mount Vernon retirement with greater calls to public service."
READ MORE: Explore George Washington's life in our interactive timeline
Timeline Leading Up to the Battle
In the summer of 1780, 5,500 French troops, with Comte de Rochambeau at the helm, landed in Newport, Rhode Island to assist the Americans. At the time, British forces were fighting on two fronts, with General Henry Clinton occupying New York Urban center, and Cornwallis, who had already captured Charleston and Savannah, in South Carolina.
"Information technology was obvious that the Americans needed a large victory if they were to convince the peace conference in Europe that they had a right to need independence for all xiii colonies," writes Thomas Fleming in his book,Yorktown.
With the Continental Ground forces positioned in New York, Washington and Rochambeau teamed to plan a timed attack on Clinton with the inflow of more French forces. When they establish the French armada was instead sailing to the Chesapeake Bay, Washington concocted a new plan.
"He would fool Clinton into thinking the Continentals were planning to assault New York while instead sneaking away to the south to set on Cornwallis," according to the Army Heritage Eye Foundation. "Washington ordered the structure of large camps with huge brick bread ovens where Clinton could meet them to create the illusion that the Continental Ground forces was preparing for a long stay. Washington also prepared faux papers discussing set on plans on Clinton, and allow these papers fall into British hands."
Washington arrives in Yorktown
By mid-September 1781, Washington and Rochambeau arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia, xiii miles from the tobacco port of Yorktown, where Cornwallis's men had built a defense of x small-scale forts (a.k.a. redoubts) with arms batteries and connecting trenches. In response, Cornwallis asked Clinton for aid, and the general promised him a fleet of five,000 British soldiers would fix canvas from New York to Yorktown.
With a modest force left in New York, well-nigh 2,500 Americans and 4,000 French soldiers—facing some 8,000 British troops—began digging their ain trenches 800 yards from the Brits and started a almost week-long arms assault on the enemy on October nine.
"The heavy cannons pounded the British mercilessly, and by Oct 11 had knocked out nearly of the British guns," the Army Heritage Center Foundation states. "Cornwallis received the unfortunate (for him) news that Clinton's departure from New York had been delayed."
A new parallel trench, 400 yards closer to the British lines, was ordered by Washington on October 11, but completing it would entail taking out the British redoubts No. 9 and No. 10.
Ringlet to Go along
The Office of Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The attack on redoubt No. 9 would be undertaken by French troops, while the No. 10 siege would be led by Colonel Alexander Hamilton. The Founding Father wasn't the elevation pick of Major Full general Marquis de Lafayette for the chore, but Hamilton, who wanted to improve his reputation by proving himself on the battlefield, talked Washington into it.
To speed up the siege of the two redoubts—French troops were to take redoubt No. 9, while Hamilton's men were assigned No. x—Washington ordered the use of bayonets, rather than "pounding them slowly into submission with cannon," writes Ron Chernow in Alexander Hamilton.
"Afterward nightfall on October 14, the allies fired several consecutive shells in the air that brilliantly illuminated the sky," Chernow writes. At that point, Hamilton and his men rallied from their trenches and sprinted beyond a quarter-mile of field with fixed bayonets. "For the sake of silence, surprise, and soldierly pride, they had unloaded their guns to take the position with bayonets alone. Dodging heavy fire, they allow out war whoops that startled their enemies. ... The whole operation had consumed fewer than x minutes."
READ More than: How Alexander Hamilton'southward Men Surprised the Enemy at the Battle of Yorktown
General Cornwallis Surrenders
Of his 400 infantrymen, Hamilton lost just 9 in the attack, with some xxx wounded, while the 400 French-led troops lost 27 men, with 109 wounded, co-ordinate to Fleming. Surrounded by enemy burn down, and blocked from receiving aid by the French fleet that had arrived in Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis was trapped.
The successful siege allowed the allies to complete the second parallel trench and "snuffed out the final remains of resistance among the British." In a final attempt on October 16, Cornwallis attempted a nighttime body of water evacuation, merely he was stopped by a storm.
On the morning time of October 19, the British sent forward a red-coated drummer boy, followed by an officer waving a white handkerchief to the parapet. All guns fell silent—Cornwallis had surrendered.
The End of the Revolutionary War
General Lord Cornwallis surrendering his sword and his army to General George Washington and the Continental and French armies after the last boxing of the Revolutionary War on October nineteen, 1781 in Yorktown, Virginia.
Ed Vebell/Getty Images
Following the Battle at Yorktown and Cornwallis's surrender—and the British down one-third of its force—the British Parliament, in March 1782, passed a resolution calling for the nation to end the war. "Oh God, it is all over!" Prime Minister Frederick N exclaimed upon hearing of the Yorktown give up, writes Alan Taylor in American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.
The British still had 30,000 men in North America, occupying the seaports of New York, Charles Town and Savannah," according to Taylor. Only the demoralizing loss at Yorktown diminished the British will to continue to fight the rebels. On September 3, 1783, the Revolutionary War came to an official cease with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/siege-of-yorktown
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