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Chapter III - The Battle of Yorktown
The Battle of Yorktown 1781
Learning of Cornwallis' move to Yorktown and knowing that the French had sent a fleet of thirty ships and three thousand men, Washington quickly decided to act. He shrewdly reasoned that a combined sea and land operation could trap Cornwallis at Yorktown and force him to surrender his army. Leaving a small decoy force in New York to fool the misguided British, Washington proceeded to march the rest of his troops south to Yorktown. By the end of September the French fleet had arrived, and they rapidly established control of the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of Virginia's York River. The combined French and American forces of over sixteen thousand men outnumbered the British two to one. The trap was set and ready to be sprung.
British attempts to break through American lines failed miserably. By October 16 Cornwallis' troops were surrounded. Cut off from any reinforcements, vulnerable to artillery fire, and suffering from extreme hunger and sickness, they lost all hope for victory. On October 17, 1781, four years to the day after the battle of Saratoga, a British drummer boy climbed atop the British lines and began beating the call for a truce. Pleading illness, Cornwallis sent his second-in-command, General O'Hara, to surrender on October 19. When O'Hara approached Washington to offer him Cornwallis' sword, Washington sent him to his second-in-command, General Lincoln, who had been humiliated by the British in a previous battle. General Lincoln gladly accepted the sword. To the tune of "The World Turned Upside Down," more than eight thousand British soldiers marched with "slow and solemn steps" onto a field near Yorktown and surrendered their weapons. As they marched to surrender, they looked away from the Americans and fixed their eyes on the French as if to say, "We are surrendering to you, the French, true soldiers and worthy enemies, and not to this American rabble." General Lafayette, quickly realizing what the British were doing, ordered the band to play "Yankee Doodle." He noted with satisfaction "that the British turned their heads at the sound of the tune." Even after six years of bitter fighting and frequent defeat, the British still underestimated their foes.
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