Answer:
It was located by sea.
Step-by-step explanation:
After suffering heavy losses in battles in the Carolinas, British General Charles Cornwallis moves his army to Yorktown, a port city on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, to await reinforcements coming by sea. But the French fleet gets there first and takes control of the bay, making it impossible for British ships to get in—or for Cornwallis to get out. Meanwhile the Marquis de Lafayette, leading an army of American troops, blocks Cornwallis’ escape route to the south. Washington leads 7,000 American and French troops from New York to attack from the north.
Washington knows the stakes are high. The complex military operation, writes historian Barbara W. Tuchman, “would be a task of extraordinary difficulty and would involve a serious risk of failure—of his own reputation, of his army and of the cause of independence.” At Washington’s direction, his army bombards Cornwallis’s forces with cannonballs night and day for a solid week before moving in to attack with bayonets. After a counterattack by his troops fails, Cornwallis realizes the situation is hopeless and surrenders his entire army of 8,000 men. The Battle of Yorktown goes down in history as the decisive battle of the Revolution.