With their left at the Angle crashed and their center near the Five Forks intersection overrun, the Confederates made a final stand here, in and around Gilliam's field. Across the open ground to your right, Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer led two Union cavalry brigades in a wild charge against the Confederate right flank. Southern horsemen under Maj. Gen. W.H.F. Lee held off the Federals.
Across the road to your left, infantrymen of Brig. Gen. Montgomery Corse's Virginia brigade struggled against an attack by Union infantry moving westward (toward you) along the White Oak Road. Though Corse's troops were overrun, their efforts allowed Pickett's remaining 7,000 men to escape to the north. Pickett's survivors would not rejoin the main Confederate army until three days later at Amelia Court House.
The defeat at Five Forks forced Lee to abandon the Petersburg lines - and hence the capital at Richmond. Eight days later, caught in a vise pf Union troops, Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House.
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