For nine months, an ever-lengthening fortified line had protected Petersburg, but on April 1, 1865, at the obscure county crossroads of Five Forks, the Confederate line stretched to its breaking point. The siege had left the Confederate lines around Petersburg thinly manned and barely able to protect the last remaining supply line into the city, the South Side Railroad. On April 1, 10,000 weary Confederates under Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett dug in at Five Forks to prevent Union General Philip Sheridan and 21,000 Union troops from moving up Fords Road to capture the South Side Railroad. That afternoon’s fighting would determine not just the future of Pickett’s command, but also the fate of Lee’s army, Petersburg and Richmond, and hence the Confederacy itself. Sheridan’s cavalry, 9,000 men, attacked Pickett’s lines frontally while Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren’s Fifth Corps infantry, 12,000 men, swept down on the Confederates from the east. Though dug in, the Confederates there were isolated from the rest of Lee’s army, and their nearest support was several miles away.