Why did battles occur after the siege of Yorktown?
The British defeat at Yorktown did not end the Revolutionary War by itself. It just became the last straw to convince certain British officials that there was no hope of winning. Strictly speaking the war was still on and other British army units in America had no orders to stop fighting. Those orders could come only from the King. When the King did learn of the Yorktown surrender, he wanted to send more soldiers to carry on the war, but most of the government officials knew that with the loss of Cornwallis’s army, there was no point in continuing so they convinced the King to stop. The slowness of communications made it inevitable that battles would continue after Yorktown. It took at least a month for news to travel by ship from America to England and another month at least for replies from England to America. Once they learned of Yorktown, British government officials debated for some time whether or not to keep fighting. When they finally agreed it was no use to do so, orders to st
