Yorktown and the Siege of 1781

An accessible historical handbook recounts the 1781 Virginia campaign and the allied Franco‑American siege that forced the British surrender at Yorktown. It traces strategic movements in the southern theater, naval engagements in Chesapeake Bay, the encirclement and trench warfare, key assaults on outworks, negotiation of capitulation, and immediate consequences for the conflict. The narrative combines operational detail with maps and battlefield descriptions, and concludes with a visitor-oriented guide to the preserved battlefield and town, practical travel and park information, and reproductions of surrender papers and parole terms.