French-American Union at Yorktown

By September 1781 Lord Cornwallis had settled a British army into the tobacco port of Yorktown, on the York River in Virginia, expecting the Royal Navy to supply or collect him. On September 5 a French fleet fought the British off the Virginia Capes and closed the Chesapeake behind him.

Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, whose French army had landed in Rhode Island the year before, marched their forces south and reached Yorktown on September 28. Their guns opened on October 9, the French firing first. On the night of October 14 the allies took two British redoubts at once: Alexander Hamilton's light infantry stormed Redoubt 10, while French troops took Redoubt 9. Five days later Cornwallis surrendered.

Neither partner could have done it alone. No fleet, no trap; no army, no siege.

The scene is a night battery. A blue-coated officer in a tricorn hat points past the muzzle of a field gun, its barrel catching the glare of its own flash, while gunners crouch around him. A figure in a pale coat of the sort French infantry wore stands at the edge of the firelight on the right. Black smoke rolls overhead, round shot is piled on the ground, and at the far left a flag with white stars on blue hangs in the haze.