Which British commander surrendered at the 1781 Siege of Yorktown?

Charles Cornwallis was the British commander who surrendered at the 1781 Siege of Yorktown.

Cornwallis’s army was trapped at Yorktown, Virginia, by combined American and French forces commanded by George Washington and the French general Rochambeau. The French navy also blocked British relief by winning the Battle of the Chesapeake, leaving Cornwallis increasingly isolated.

After weeks of bombardment and siege operations, Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781. The capitulation was a decisive American victory and is widely treated as the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War, although fighting and negotiations continued afterward.

Cornwallis did not personally attend the surrender ceremony; Brigadier General Charles O’Hara represented him. A popular story says the British band played “The World Turned Upside Down,” but historians have not established that account as certain. The war formally ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.