A British army under General Cornwallis, fighting its way through the Carolinas and Virginia, made its way to Yorktown to be evacuated by the British Navy. Washington coordinated an elaborate operation whereby both the French army in New England and the American Army in New York slipped off to Virginia without the British noticing. Cornwallis found himself surrounded, and a French naval victory against the British rescue fleet dashed his hopes. The surrender of Cornwallis to Washington on October 17, 1781, marked the end of serious fighting. In London, the war party lost control of parliament, and the British negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1783) That ended the war. Hoping to gain the United States as a major trading partner, the British offered surprisingly generous terms.