Four British leaders figure prominently: Charles, Earl Cornwallis, John Burgoyne, Lord North, and King George III. .
Less than six months before the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown, the British intercepted a letter written by George Washington wherein he expressed the need for the war to end with the next campaign. The Continental Army was exhausted, the fledgling nation impoverished. " we are at the end of our tether now or never our deliverance must come " Washington wrote. The British Army was advancing through the southern colonies, having conquered Georgia and South Carolina. British political leaders had great faith in Charles, Earl Cornwallis.
Charles was the eldest son of the first Earl Cornwallis, and heralded from an aristocratic British family. He was educated at Eton College, and though he attended Cambridge for a short time, he realized his aptitude lay in military service when he joined the Grenadier Guards at age eighteen. He inherited the family title in his early twenties, becoming a member of the House of Lords. His uncle was a general, and his brother William served in the Royal Navy during the Revolutionary War, so there was something of a family military tradition. At age twenty-three Charles was a lieutenant colonel. He was a privy councilor at thirty and a constable at the Tower of London at thirty-three. .
Like other career-minded military men, he worked hard to increase his knowledge of warfare and improve his military expertise. He attended a military academy, one of very few officers to do so. In 1757, he took leave from his army post to travel to Europe with a Prussian military officer, debating battle tactics at some German courts. When he was nineteen, he secured a highly coveted post for anyone desirous of promotion when he became aide-de-camp to Lieutenant General John Manners, Marquess of Granby. Before he ever set foot in America, he was a veteran of European warfare.
