Vicksburg game: the great assault on the fortress city
Eight miles of earthworks on the ridges above the Mississippi, and three Union corps going forward at once. The Vicksburg assault is part of Grant's Campaigns in Civy War. Can you do better than Grant did?
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.
Vicksburg
Grant's Campaigns
May 22, 1863 · 10 a.m.
As the Union, carry the works before Joseph E. Johnston can relieve the city. Sherman goes in at the Stockade Redan behind a Forlorn Hope of volunteers, with Blair's and Tuttle's brigades; McPherson's corps, Logan's and Ransom's brigades, at the Great Redoubt; McClernand's at the Railroad Redoubt, where Lawler's brigade and the 22nd Iowa lead.
As the Confederacy, hold the line. Shoup's Louisianans and the 3rd Louisiana hold the Stockade Redan and the Great Redoubt sector, the 2nd Texas its lunette, Cockrell's Missourians stand in reserve, and Cumming's and Barton's Georgians hold the line to the south. Let them climb the ravines into your fire.
The battle
Vicksburg was the Confederacy's last great fortress on the Mississippi. After Champion Hill, Pemberton's army fell back inside the city's works, and Grant tried to take them by storm before Johnston could gather an army in his rear.
The first assault on May 19 was thrown back. On May 22 every gun opened and all three corps went forward together. Union flags reached the ditches of the Stockade Redan and the Railroad Redoubt, and a few Iowans fought their way inside the redoubt, but nowhere could the breach be supported. Union losses topped 3,000.
Grant settled down to a siege. On July 4, 1863, the day after Gettysburg, Pemberton surrendered the city and 29,000 men. The Mississippi was open from source to mouth and the Confederacy was cut in two. Lincoln wrote that the Father of Waters again went unvexed to the sea. The assault taught a lesson both armies would learn again and again: men in good earthworks could not be driven out by charging them head-on.
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 the siege map of Vicksburg by Major F. E. Prime, Grant's chief engineer, surveyed under Captain C. B. Comstock in 1863, 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.
