British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, after a Franco-American siege.
George Washington commanded the American forces, while French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau and a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse played crucial roles. The French naval victory at the Battle of the Chesapeake prevented British relief by sea, leaving Cornwallis’s army surrounded at Yorktown, Virginia.
The formal surrender ceremony involved Cornwallis’s deputy, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, because Cornwallis claimed illness and did not attend. O’Hara first approached Rochambeau, then Washington, before handing the sword to Major General Benjamin Lincoln, Washington’s second-in-command.
Yorktown was the last major land engagement of the Revolutionary War. Fighting continued elsewhere, especially at sea, but the surrender made continued British attempts to regain the colonies politically difficult. Peace negotiations followed and produced the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which formally recognized American independence.