Hahahaha oh shit, today's the anniversary of that time Jimmy Longstreet undertook an offensive against Knoxville, TN in 1863 just to get the hell away from Braxton Bragg and ya know, who can blame him?

So Bragg was besieging Chattanooga. Longstreet had been sent west to try to keep Bragg's pants from falling off but by this point was like "I hate every part of you" and used the US force at Knoxville as an excuse to protect Bragg's rear but really just to gtfo

Longstreet is besieging Knoxville, protected by our old buddy Ambrose Burnside, sent out west to redeem himself after killing everyone at Fredericksburg in '62. Burnside has an ace up his sleeve - CPT Orlando Poe, a Buckeye, and an engineer. Best combo EVER

Poe builds fortifications that are gnarly - and gets into the really fun shit of being an engineer, aka looking at a piece of terrain and being like "how can I use this ground to absolutely fuck up EVERYTHING in my enemy's world?"

He builds Fort Sanders, with a 12 foot wide, 8 feet deep ditch, and walls rising 15 feet above. In front of the ditch he cuts the trees, leaving the stumps. He then uses telegraph wire to lace tanglefoot alllllll through the stumps, at ankle and knee height

Engineers:

Longstreet is like "whatever" and on November 29, sends 3 brigades against the fort, which held only about 440 men of the 79th New York, also known as the Highland Guard, a pre-war militia unit that LARPed as the Camerons of the British Army but which was by now battle hardened

In addition to the faux Highlanders, there was also artillery. 12 guns overlooking the ditch. The night was cold and rainy. Basically, the worst. The rebs attack at first at light aaaaaand get caught in the tanglefoot. That's when the canister and rifle fire hits

The 3000 rebs then hit the ditch and realize no one remembered to bring ladders and now they're facing getting out of the ditch & scaling the 15 foot, frozen, icy parapet, all the while being hit with canister, rifle fire, & grenades

Still they give it a go

After about 20 minutes, the whole thing is OVER

There are 8 US dead. 5 wounded.

129 attackers are dead. 458 wounded. 226 and three flags captured.

Utter failure

Then Longstreet gets news that Bragg got his ass handed to him at Chattanooga and pops smoke for back east

The battle of Fort Sanders is notable for a few reasons:
1) Burnside manages not to screw it up
2) Longstreet REALLY screws it up
3) Engineers show what they can do. CPT Poe gets picked to be Sherman's engineer on the March to the Sea where he bridges ALL THE THINGS

And exactly one year later John Bell Hood manages to amazingly do nothing at Spring Hill against a divided US force which marches past him and becomes a united US force, thereby making Hood fall back

So in essence,