fendable. Cornwallis settled on Yorktown with its high
bluff and good port.

Yorktown, September-October, 1781

The news that Admiral de Grasse and the French fleet had cleared France
presented Washington with an opportunity he had to exploit. Washington
and Rochambeau took counsel and concluded an assault on Clinton in New
York was not a certain success. Cornwallis was a better bet. They decided
to leave Clinton in New York believing he was about to be attacked by a
large army and move quickly southward to Virginia. Coordinating their
arrival with that of de Grasse in the Chesapeake, they would snare
Cornwallis at Yorktown.

For once in the war a grand American plan went off without a hitch.
Washington and Rochambeau left New York on August 21, getting away
without detection by Clinton. Simultaneously Lafayette moved his troops
south of Cornwallis to block an escape into the Carolinas. On August 30
de Grasse with his great fleet of 24 major ships, 1,700 guns, 19,000
seamen, and 3,000 troops reached the Capes. He had disembarked his troops
before a smaller British fleet arrived to challenge him. On September 5
the French fleet drove the English back to New York. Cornwallis was
trapped.

Carefully Washington, Rochambeau, and de Grasse plotted the siege of
Yorktown. When the formal siege began on September 28, Washington had an
army of nearly 16,000 men including 7,800 fresh, disciplined, and
well-equipped French troops. The 8,800 Americans included 3,000 Virginia
militia commanded by Governor Nelson and veteran Generals Weedon, Robert
Lawson, and Edward Stevens. The bulk of Washington's Continentals were
from Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Cornwallis had about 7,000
men, many of whom had been in the field since February, 1780.

At the beginning Cornwallis abandoned his weaker outer defenses, which
Washington immediately turned into artillery battery positions. Once the
siege began in earnest on October 6, the allied artillery pounded the
British into submission. Parallel trenches were dug close to the British
lines. On the night of October 14 a combined attack by Americans under
Colonel Alexander Hamilton and the French took the two redoubts which
were the keys to the sagging British defenses. On the 16th Cornwallis
attempted to escape across the York River to Gloucester Point and then
north to New York and Clinton. A sudden storm scattered his boats and
barges. With that Cornwallis recognized the utter h