8 Battles That Wiped Out Entire Armies On Both Sides

8 Battles That Wiped Out Entire Armies On Both Sides It was the first week of May, 1863, and General Robert E. Lee had just done something that military historians would spend the next century and a half calling impossible. Outnumbered more than two to one, with his back to the Rappahannock River and a Union army of over 130,000 men bearing down on him from multiple directions, Lee had divided his already smaller force not once but twice, sent Stonewall Jackson on a sweeping flank march through dense Virginia wilderness, and collapsed the entire right side of the Union line like a house of cards in a windstorm. By the time the fighting sputtered to its conclusion on May 4th, Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac, the largest and best-supplied army the United States had ever assembled, was retreating back across the river it had crossed with such confidence just days before. Lee had won. Completely. Undeniably. And it was destroying him.