On what date did the British army surrender at Yorktown in 1781?

The British army surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

The surrender concluded the Siege of Yorktown in Virginia, where American and French forces trapped General Charles Cornwallis’s army. George Washington commanded the allied American troops, while the French fleet helped prevent British relief by controlling the Chesapeake approaches.

The siege began in September 1781 and ended after weeks of bombardment and trench warfare. Cornwallis’s surrender was a decisive military defeat for Britain, although fighting and negotiations continued elsewhere afterward. The event effectively ended major combat in the American Revolutionary War.

Yorktown is sometimes described as the moment the United States won independence, but independence was formally recognized later through the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The surrender instead forced Britain toward peace negotiations. The date October 19 is specifically the day British troops marched out and laid down their arms.