Schematic plan · American Civil War

Battle of New Market

15 May 1864
Virginia
Victory for Confederacy

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

Confederacy (Cs Army of Northern Virginia, 5,000 men under Breckinridge) attacked USA (US Army of the Potomac, 5,150 men under Sigel) in Virginia. The CAA Database of Battles records 11 hours of fighting on a front of 2.8 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Confederacy won. Losses: Confederacy 577 (12%), USA 831 (16%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

Confederacy

Breckinridge

Unit	Arm	Men
Confederacy left wing	Infantry	934
Confederacy centre	Infantry	1,245
Confederacy right wing	Infantry	934
Confederacy reserve	Infantry	778
Confederacy cavalry of the left	Cavalry	450
Confederacy cavalry of the right	Cavalry	450
Confederacy artillery (14 guns)	Artillery	210
Breckinridge	Commander	—
In this plan		5,001

USA

Sigel

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	917
USA centre	Infantry	1,222
USA right wing	Infantry	917
USA reserve	Infantry	764
USA cavalry of the left	Cavalry	500
USA cavalry of the right	Cavalry	500
USA artillery (22 guns)	Artillery	330
Sigel	Commander	—
In this plan		5,150

What the sources report

	Confederacy	USA
Strength, this plan	5,000	5,150
Losses, this plan	577	831

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 204, “New Market”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 11 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 2.8 km (attacker), 2.8 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Confederacyattacker	5,000	577	900	14	Frontal attack; Penetration
USAdefender	5,150	831	1,000	22	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · initiative +1

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 204 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Battle of New Market · CC-BY-SA-4.0

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.