The Battle of Yorktown is generally considered the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War.
The Yorktown campaign culminated in the surrender of British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis on October 19, 1781. American forces under George Washington joined French troops commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau, while a French fleet helped prevent British relief by sea.
The allied army surrounded the British position at Yorktown, Virginia, and constructed siege lines that brought artillery increasingly close to Cornwallis’s defenses. After several weeks of fighting and bombardment, Cornwallis’s position became untenable. He surrendered his army, although he did not personally attend the ceremony.
The surrender did not instantly end the war. Fighting and diplomatic negotiations continued, but the defeat made a British victory politically difficult. The conflict formally ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783. Yorktown therefore marks the decisive military conclusion, while the treaty marks the legal and diplomatic conclusion.