New Books In Military History

Charles Lord Cornwallis’s campaign through the southern American colonies came to an ignominious close on October 19, 1781, on an open field outside Yorktown, Virginia. At approximately noon, Cornwallis’s beleaguered soldiers, exhausted and low on provisions, emerged from behind their fortifications, laid down their arms, and delivered the earl’s sword to Continental General Benjamin Lincoln, a man whom Cornwallis had helped vanquish a little over a year before at the siege of Charleston. This dramatic reversal of fortune closed the door on a once aggressive British stratagem designed to end the American rebellion by dismembering its southern limbs one by one. Initial victories at Augusta, Savannah, Charleston, and Camden appeared to augur well for Cornwallis’s campaign. But what began with great promise in 1779 and 1780 soon ended in resounding defeat. After fighting Continental General Nathaniel Greene, Patriot partisans, and the Carolina backcountry throughout 1781, Cornwallis’s army was a spent force. Bes