Charles Cornwallis was the British general who surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.
Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781. The American and French forces were commanded by George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, while the French fleet helped prevent British relief by controlling the Chesapeake approaches. The siege ended after weeks of bombardment and trench fighting.
Cornwallis did not personally attend the formal surrender ceremony; British officers presented his sword through Brigadier General Charles O’Hara. Cornwallis said he was ill, although the surrender followed the army’s defeat and the collapse of its position on the York River peninsula.
Yorktown did not instantly produce the Treaty of Paris. Military actions continued in other places, and peace negotiations took time. However, the surrender badly weakened Britain’s political support for continuing the war in North America. The eventual treaty, signed in 1783, formally recognized the United States as independent. Yorktown is therefore remembered as the decisive military turning point leading toward the nation’s independence.