On what date did British forces surrender at Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War?

British forces surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

The surrender followed a siege in Virginia led by George Washington’s Continental Army and French forces commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau. French naval forces under the Comte de Grasse blocked British relief by sea, helping trap the army commanded by Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis.

The allied army began the siege on September 28 and captured key British defenses during the night of October 14. Cornwallis requested capitulation terms on October 17, and the formal surrender ceremony took place two days later.

Yorktown was the final major land engagement of the Revolutionary War, but it did not itself constitute a peace treaty. Negotiations continued and culminated in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The Yorktown victory is therefore a military turning point, while the treaty supplied the legal end to the war.