On the 17th, at about 10 o'clock, the British raised a white flag on their walls, beat a parley on their drums, and the firing ceased on all sides. Then the terms of surrender were agreed upon between Washington and Cornwallis, and on the afternoon of October 19, 1781, British troops commanded by Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis marched from heavily damaged Yorktown and surrendered on this field as prisoners of war to the allied French and American armies under the command of General George Washington. Cornwallis, pleading illness, did not accompany his men. The British defeat at Yorktown was the culmination of the Revolutionary War.
