CHAPTER LXXII.
It is not my purpose to describe the battle of Cedar Creek. Even of the rôle played by Gordon’s division, of which the present writer formed, according to Alice, a large part, I shall give no detailed account; for my object is not so much to instruct military men as to entertain my fair reader.
Three simultaneous attacks were to be made. Rosser, advancing along the “Back-road,” far away to our left, was to swoop down, with his cavalry, upon that of the enemy. Kershaw and Wharton were to attack his centre; Gordon, with Ramseur and Pegram, to turn and assault his left.
At eight o’clock, therefore, in the evening of October 18, 1864, our men, rising from around their camp-fires and buckling on their accoutrements, took up their line of march. The enemy was miles away, yet they spoke in undertones; for their instinct told them that they were to surprise him. Their very tread as they moved along was in a muffled rhythm, as it seemed to me, and their canteens gave forth a dim jingle, as of sheep-bells, by night, from a nodding flock on a distant hill.
Leaving the pike and turning to the right, we (Gordon’s command) at one time marched down a country road, at another straggled, single-file, along bridle-paths, at times fought our way through briers and amid jagged rocks as we toiled along under the shadow of Massanutten.
At last, when the night was wellnigh spent, we stacked arms in a field. The shining Shenandoah murmured just in front of us. We talked almost in whispers.
Suddenly the notes of a bugle, faint, far away, broke the stillness of the night. The enemy’s cavalry at Front Royal were sounding the reveille. We held our breath,—had they divined our intentions?
The bugle-call to our right had scarcely died away, when, from far away to our left, the rattle of carbines was heard, low and soft, as though one dreamt of battle! ’Twas Rosser. Unfortunately, he had found a portion of the enemy in the saddle and ready to march, though not expecting an attack.
Just then the clanking of sabres and the trampling of hoofs was heard close beside us; and turning, we saw a squadron of our cavalry moving upon the ford. A thick mist had begun to rise, and as they rode through it they seemed colossal phantoms rather than earthly horsemen. A few moments, and the crack of carbine-shots was heard. The enemy’s videttes retired, and our horsemen dashed across the stream. We followed, and formed in a field beyond the river.
The mist thickened with the approach of day. You could scarcely see a man thirty feet away. Captain Smith had deployed his skirmishers. As he stood near me, waiting for the word forward, a terrific rattle of musketry burst upon our ears, coming from our left. It was Kershaw, we knew. And then the cannon began to roar. Kershaw had left, his artillery behind him. Had they been ready to receive him, and were the cannon and rifles of an entire corps mowing down his gallant little division? It was an appalling moment!
The word was given, and Captain Smith and his skirmishers dashed into the wood at a double-quick. We followed, and soon the air was filled with the roar of wide-spread battle. The cannon that we had heard, as we soon learned, were captured guns that Kershaw had turned upon the enemy. His division had rushed up a steep hill and put a corps to flight. Between us, we had soon driven, in headlong rout from their camps, the Eighth and the Nineteenth Corps. The Sixth remained, but we could not see it, so dense was the mist. Our assault slackened, ceased.
What would have been the result had we pushed on it is needless, now, to inquire. Desultory firing continued till about four o’clock in the afternoon, when Sheridan, who was at Winchester when the battle began, having galloped up, rallied thousands of the fugitives, and adding them to the Sixth Corps and his heavy force of cavalry, attacked and routed us in turn.
There were those who said that Early, if he did not choose to continue the attack (the most brilliant movement of the war, I think), should have withdrawn his troops, and not held them there, in an open plain, with greatly superior forces in his immediate front. He himself, smarting under defeat, attributed the disaster to the fact that his men, scattering through the captured camps, were engaged in plundering instead of being at their posts; and his words have been quoted by our friends the enemy. But I think that a moment’s reflection will dispel this idea. Our hungry men, pursuing the enemy, and coming upon their sutlers’ wagons, did undoubtedly snatch up such edibles as came in their way; but this occurred at day-break, and we were not attacked till four o’clock in the afternoon. I remember that I myself, espying a fat leg of mutton (of which some farmer had been robbed), laid hands on it with a view to a royal supper when the battle should be over; and, by brandishing it over my head, like a battle-axe, caused much laughter in the ranks. What became of it I cannot recall. I know I did not eat it; but I know, too, that my seizing it had no influence on the fortunes of the day.
The truth is, our defeat requires no explanation or apology from our brave old general. When Sheridan attacked us, he brought against our thin, single line of jaded men, overwhelming masses of fresh troops, assaulting our front, and, at the same time, turning both our flanks. I remember that Gordon’s men, who held the left of our line, did not give way till bodies of the enemy had marched entirely around our flank, and began to pour deadly and unanswered volleys into our backs.
One more word and I am done with the battle as such.
Captain Smith, in his letter to Major Frobisher, found it impossible to understand why our army was not entirely destroyed at Winchester. I, on the contrary, can explain how it was that we were not annihilated at Cedar Creek.
When the enemy, in their pursuit, reached Strasburg, and saw, below them, slowly retreating along the road to Fisher’s Hill, a dark mass of troops, they called a halt. That halt saved our army. I can hardly repress a smile now, when I remember that that serried phalanx which looked so formidable, and gave the enemy pause, consisted of fifteen hundred Federal prisoners, guarded by a few hundred of our men. But the eccentric strategy of that halt, instead of being comic, was, in truth, fearfully tragic; for it protracted the defence of Richmond, and delayed the close of the war till the following spring, and cost the lives of thousands of brave men on both sides.
So much for the battle of Cedar Creek. Such slight sketch of it as I have given has cost me more pain than it can give the reader pleasure. Not willingly did I introduce it into my story.
That story grows sombre. It opened bright and joyous as the sunny nook of Earth in which my earlier scenes were laid. But between my hero and the land he helped to defend there is a parallelism of fortunes. The shadow of the same fate hangs over both.
