Charles Cornwallis commanded the British army that surrendered at the 1781 Siege of Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War.
Cornwallis established his army at Yorktown, Virginia, where he expected support from the Royal Navy and reinforcements from New York. Instead, American and French forces under George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau surrounded the town in September and October 1781.
The allied siege cut off British escape routes and subjected the defenses to sustained artillery fire. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, after roughly three weeks of siege operations. He did not personally attend the surrender ceremony; Brigadier General Charles O'Hara represented him.
Yorktown did not instantly end every military action, but it was the decisive major battle of the war. Peace negotiations followed, leading to the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which recognized American independence. A common mix-up is confusing Cornwallis with General Henry Clinton, the British commander in chief based in New York.