Yorktown, 1781

On October 19, 1781, the British garrison at Yorktown marched out to surrender. For three weeks American and French siege lines had crept closer to Cornwallis's earthworks, while de Grasse's fleet held the Chesapeake behind him. There was no way out.

Some 8,000 British and German soldiers filed between two lines a mile long — French in white on one side, Americans in blue on the other. Cornwallis pleaded illness and sent Brigadier General Charles O'Hara instead. O'Hara offered his sword to Rochambeau, who pointed him to Washington, who pointed him to Benjamin Lincoln — the general the British had denied the honors of war at Charleston the year before.

Tradition says the British bands played "The World Turned Upside Down." In London, Lord North took the news, by one account, like a musket ball in the chest.

The red column carries the eye from the foreground to the vanishing point, flanked by the two armies that beat it — Continentals in blue at the left edge, French in white under the fleur-de-lis on the right. The mounted officer in scarlet is the only figure moving freely, and he is riding toward defeat.

Above it all the sky does the talking: a long bank of cloud breaking into afternoon gold, the Stars and Stripes lifting in the same wind that stirs the French colors.