american artillery at york town

Popular images of Revolutionary War battles tend to focus on British and American soldiers engaged in close, hand-to-hand combat. While this may be the case for many of the battles, the Siege of Yorktown was primarily an exchange of artillery fire, waged at long range and relatively few direct troop confrontations. The exact number of artillery pieces used by the British and the Allies during the siege is unknown. Estimates, place the total number of siege and field artillery pieces at upwards of 375. During the eight day siege, the Allies fired an average of 1,700 cannon balls and bombs per day. This comes to about 1.2 every minute.