Washington surrounds Cornwallis at Yorktown; the armies sleep in the open
For weeks Cornwallis had been digging in at Yorktown, waiting on ships that never got past de Grasse's blockade. On September 28, 1781, Washington led the combined American and French army out of Williamsburg and marched it into position around the town, the French taking the left, the Americans the place of honor on the right. Washington himself rode along the British lines that afternoon, sizing up the earthworks. That night the armies slept outdoors while engineers bridged the marsh, and hungry soldiers went hunting wild hogs for supper.
This was the Continental Army's last major field maneuver of the war, and Washington ran it himself, at the head of French regulars who deferred to his command. The encirclement that began this day led directly to Cornwallis's surrender three weeks later, which brought Britain to the negotiating table and left Yorktown fixed in American memory as the war's last battlefield.
QWhat happened when a British storming party tried to knock out the allied guns on October 15?
Colonel Robert Abercromby led a British sortie meant to spike the allied artillery before it could finish the job, and as his men charged he shouted, "Push on my brave boys, and skin the bastards!" The raid managed to disable a handful of guns, but allied crews had them back in action within hours. It was one of the last aggressive moves Cornwallis's garrison had left in it. Two days later he was asking for terms. Abercromby's line survives as one of the few recorded battle cries from the British side of the siege, one of the few lines of dialogue recorded from the siege.
QHow did the Americans finally break into Redoubt No. 10 on October 14?
A British sentry spotted the advancing column, challenged them, and fired a single shot. The Americans answered with a bayonet charge instead of returning fire, chopping through the wooden abatis with axes while men climbed over the walls by standing on each other's shoulders. Alexander Hamilton led the assault while John Laurens circled to the rear to block any British escape. Inside, Major Campbell, the redoubt's commander, was captured along with his garrison. Someone in the ranks yelled "Rush on boys! The fort's ours!" as the position fell. The whole action took about ten minutes, a stunning contrast to the deliberate month of digging that preceded it.
QWhat did Cornwallis do to his own fleet inside Yorktown harbor?
Facing relentless allied bombardment that sent cannonballs sailing clear across the town and into the water, Cornwallis ordered more than a dozen of his own ships sunk in the harbor as the bombardment intensified. The wrecks did little to change the outcome of the bombardment. By mid-October, his garrison was also pitching tents inside the trenches themselves and losing men to desertion in growing numbers, conditions that only worsened in the days before the surrender request went out.
