While the French fleet commanded by Admiral Comte de Grasse blocked the Chesapeake and held the British fleet at bay, American and French troops trapped British forces at Yorktown in the fall of 1781.

Journal of Economics, Vol. 140, Issue. 3, p. 233. An accessible and authoritative account of the battle of Yorktown (1781), the last major battle in the American War of Independence, where an ...

On Oct. 19, 1781, British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered his army of about 8,000 men to Gen. George Washington at Yorktown, giving up any chance of winning the Revolutionary War. Cornwallis ...