The Last Big Battle

By 1781, the war had been going on for six long years and everyone was tired.

General Washington and his French friend the Marquis de Lafayette hatched a plan: trap the British general Cornwallis in a little Virginia town called Yorktown.

French warships blocked the sea so Cornwallis couldn't escape, while American and French soldiers surrounded him on land.

After three weeks of being stuck, Cornwallis raised a white flag on October 19, 1781, and marched his soldiers out to lay down their muskets.

The story goes that a British band played a tune called 'The World Turned Upside Down' — because a tiny new country had really just beaten the biggest army on earth.