Lieutenant-General Charles Cornwallis was a loyal servant of the crown of Great Britain, and not an untalented one. Forces he commanded won more often than not during the American Revolutionary War. But by the time of the Battle of Yorktown, his forces were depleted. Losses in troop strength and supplies had not been replaced, and then they found themselves trapped into a siege. Promised naval assistance failed to materialise, as the French defeated the British at the Battle of Chesapeake on September 5.
The French and American forces, on the other hand, were well supplied and able to settle in for a long siege. They had the British surrounded by both land and sea, and it was just a matter of waiting. As it happened, it only took three weeks. Cornwallis surrendered to Washington and de Rochambeau on October 19, although he himself did not attend the ceremony. With his surrender, the Americans scored their final decisive victory in the war – although scattered skirmishes still occurred, the British largely conceded defeat and returned to Europe.
Cornwallis did not order his band to play “The World Turned Upside Down” that day – that legend first appears about a century later, and only in American sources.
