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By December 1780, the American Revolutionary War's North American theatres had reached a critical point. The Continental Army had suffered major defeats earlier in the year, with its southern armies either captured or dispersed in the loss of Charleston and the Battle of Camden in the south, while the armies of George Washington and the British commander-in-chief for North America, Sir Henry ...
Spain provided financing for the final siege of Yorktown in 1781 with a collection of gold and silver in Havana, then Spanish Cuba. [1] Spain was allied with France through the Bourbon Family Compact and the Revolution was an opportunity to confront their common enemy, Great Britain.
The siege of Yorktown was the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War in North America, and led to the surrender of General Cornwallis and the capture of both him and his army. The Continental Army's victory at Yorktown prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict. [b]
The guns played an important role in such battles as the Battle of Saratoga, [5] and the Siege of Yorktown. George Washington wrote about the supplies and guns in a letter to General Heath on 2 May 1777: I was this morning favored with yours containing the pleasing accounts of the late arrivals at Portsmouth and Boston.
The siege of Yorktown was the culminating act of the Yorktown campaign, ... and French forces fought in the Siege of Yorktown, or provided significant local support.
With the surrender at Yorktown, the full participation of French forces in that battle, and the resulting loss of Cornwallis's army, the British war effort ground to a halt. The sole remaining British army of any size remaining in America was that under Sir Henry Clinton in New York.
After the siege of Yorktown the French returned to the West Indies and were successful in taking St. Kitts (despite a naval defeat), Montserrat as well as Demerara and Essequibo in South America by February 1782. A planned Franco-Spanish invasion of Jamaica was aborted after the decisive Battle of the Saintes in 1782.
The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781. New York: Savas Beatie. ISBN 1-932714-05-7. OCLC 60642656. Johnston, Henry Phelps (1881). The Yorktown Campaign and the Surrender of Cornwallis, 1781. Harper & Brothers. p. 34. Lafayette fredericksburg 1781. Ketchum, Richard M (2004). Victory at Yorktown: the Campaign That Won the ...