ARTILLERY OF INDEPENDENCE - SIEGE OF YORKTOWN, VA - OCTOBER 9, 1781
ARTILLERY OF INDEPENDENCE - SIEGE OF YORKTOWN, VA - OCTOBER 9, 1781
George Washington Firing the First American Artillery Round at Yorktown
The annus mirabilis, the year of miracles, was about to reach its grand finale when his aides informed George Washington in the early afternoon of 9 October 1781, that the time had come to open the American artillery on Lord Cornwallis. On 14 September, four weeks after he had left Phillipsburg on 18 August, Washington had entered Williamsburg to the acclaim of some 2,000 Continental Army forces and an equal number of Virginia militia under the marquis de Lafayette and that of about 3,000 French forces under the marquis de St. Simon, arrived from the West Indies on the fleet of Admiral de Grasse on 29 August
