At the 1781 Battle of Yorktown, which British commander surrendered to the American and French forces?

At the 1781 Battle of Yorktown, British commander Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the American and French forces.

Yorktown was the last major military campaign of the American Revolutionary War. General George Washington commanded the Continental Army, while French forces under the Comte de Rochambeau and the French fleet supported the operation. Their combined army surrounded the British position on Virginia’s York River.

Cornwallis’s army became trapped after the French naval victory at the Battle of the Chesapeake. American and French troops then tightened the siege with artillery and trenches. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, although fighting elsewhere continued for some time afterward.

A common mix-up is confusing Cornwallis with General Henry Clinton, the British commander in chief in North America. Clinton remained in New York and did not lead the Yorktown surrender. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the war.