On what date did Lord Cornwallis surrender at the Battle of Yorktown?

Lord Cornwallis surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

American and French forces trapped the British army at Yorktown, Virginia, during the final major campaign of the American Revolutionary War. General George Washington commanded the allied army, while French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau fought alongside the Continental Army.

French naval forces helped make the siege decisive by blocking British relief and evacuation from the Chesapeake Bay. Allied artillery bombardment and attacks on British defensive positions steadily weakened Cornwallis’s army. Cornwallis claimed illness and sent Brigadier General Charles O’Hara to conduct the surrender ceremony.

The surrender did not legally end the war, and fighting continued in other regions. It did, however, convinced many British leaders that continuing the conflict was too costly. Peace negotiations followed, leading to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Yorktown therefore became the Revolution’s most important military turning point.