May 8–21, 1864 · Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia
Spotsylvania game: the Bloody Angle
A salient the soldiers called the Mule Shoe, twenty thousand men in a column through the fog, and twenty hours of fighting across a log wall. The Bloody Angle is part of Grant's Campaigns in Civy War.
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.
The Bloody Angle
Grant's Campaigns
May 12, 1864 · 4:35 a.m.
As the Union, break the Mule Shoe and split Lee's army. Hancock's II Corps goes in at dawn: Barlow's division, with Miles's and Brooke's brigades and the Irish Brigade, beside Birney's, Mott's and Gibbon's. Wright's VI Corps, Warren's V and Burnside's IX are on the field.
As the Confederacy, hold the salient until a new line is dug behind it. Edward Johnson's division holds the tip, with the Stonewall Brigade, Steuart's brigade and the Louisiana Tigers, and the guns pulled out yesterday are only now being hurried back. Lane's North Carolinians, Rodes's brigades and Gordon's division stand ready to counterattack.
The battle
After the Wilderness, Grant raced Lee for the crossroads at Spotsylvania Court House, and lost by a narrow margin. Lee dug in, and his line bulged north in a great salient. On May 10 Emory Upton broke into it with twelve regiments and could not be supported.
On May 11 Grant wrote to Washington that he proposed to fight it out on this line if it took all summer. The next morning Hancock's whole corps went forward through rain and fog and overran the tip of the Mule Shoe, capturing most of Johnson's division and two generals. Lee's counterattacks sealed the breach, and for some twenty hours men fought hand to hand across the log parapet at the Bloody Angle. An oak tree nearly two feet thick was cut down by musket balls alone; its stump is in the Smithsonian.
At midnight the Confederates fell back to a new line across the base of the salient. Nothing was decided, and after more than a week of further fighting the armies moved on south.
Free or paid
Paid: part of Grant's Campaigns, a one-time purchase of six battles from Champion Hill to Appomattox (Fort Donelson, the first, is free). The map is Robert Knox Sneden's plan of the attack on the salient angle on May 12, from the Library of Congress.
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.