Grant had now changed his plan of campaign. He determined to capture
Petersburg by a _coup_ and cut the communication of Lee and Richmond
with the South. The _coup_ failed. The ragged remnants of Lee's army
which had been left there to defend it, held the trenches until
reinforcements arrived.
He determined to take it by a resistless concerted assault. On the 16th
he threw three of his army corps on Beauregard's thin lines before
Petersburg, capturing four redoubts. At daylight, on the 17th, he again
hurled his men on Beauregard and drove his men out of his first line of
defense. All day the defenders held their second line, though Grant's
crack divisions poured out their blood like water. As night fell the
dead were once more piled high on the Federal front and the Confederate
dead filled the trenches.
As the third day dawned the fierce, assault was renewed, but Lee had
brought up Anderson's Corps with Kershaw and Field's division and the
blue waves broke against the impregnable grey ranks and rolled back,
leaving the dead in dark heaps.
As the shadows of night fell, Grant withdrew his shattered lines to
their trenches.
_He had lost ten thousand five hundred more men and had failed._
He began to burrow his fortifications into the earth around Petersburg
and try by siege what had been found impossible by assault.
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