April 30 – May 6, 1863 · Spotsylvania County, Virginia
Chancellorsville game: Lee's boldest gamble
Lee splits an army half the size of his enemy's and sends Stonewall Jackson around its flank. Chancellorsville is one of the free battles at the top of the Civy War battle list.
One scenario, playable from either side. Every battle runs five minutes on the clock against a Green, Regular or Veteran enemy: the attacker has to break the line before nightfall, the defender has to hold.
Chancellorsville
Free
April 30 – May 6, 1863
As the Union, hold the crossroads against the flanking march. Hooker's headquarters at Chancellorsville, Reynolds on one wing and Sickles on the other are your three flags, and Jackson's corps is marching to strike your exposed flank. Make the gamble cost Lee dearly.
As the Confederacy, the attacker, roll up the Union flank at the crossroads. Lee holds the Fredericksburg road, Jackson comes in from the south and Early's flag sits on the far flank. Fall on the exposed flank, seize the crossroads, and make Hooker's army run before the clock runs out.
Like every battle in the game it lasts five minutes, can be fought from either side, and comes at three levels of difficulty: Green, Regular or Veteran.
The battle
In the spring of 1863 Joseph Hooker took the Army of the Potomac, roughly twice the size of Lee's army, across the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers and around Lee's left at Fredericksburg. He reached the Chancellorsville crossroads, a single large house in the tangled woods known as the Wilderness, and stopped.
Lee left a small force under Jubal Early at Fredericksburg and turned to face Hooker. On May 2 he split his army again. Jackson's corps made a long march across the Union front and fell on the open right flank at dusk, routing the XI Corps. That night Jackson was shot by his own men as he rode back from scouting ahead; he died eight days later.
On May 3 the Confederates took the crossroads after some of the hardest fighting of the war, and Hooker pulled back to a new line. A Union attack from Fredericksburg under John Sedgwick was stopped at Salem Church, and Hooker recrossed the Rappahannock. The battle cost about 17,000 Union and 13,000 Confederate soldiers. It is remembered as Lee's masterpiece, and it sent him north toward Gettysburg without Jackson.
Free or paid
Free. Chancellorsville is one of four classic battles at the top of the battle list, alongside Antietam, Gettysburg and Shiloh, and needs no purchase. A year later the armies fought over the same woods again: see the Wilderness, in Grant's Campaigns.
Thirteen battles, the Drill Field and the Field Manual are free. The Historical Campaigns, Grant's Campaigns and The Western Campaigns are optional one-time purchases that restore on every device signed in to the same Apple ID.