The failure to take the rifle-pits had been followed by a second lull, betokening, to the experienced soldier, fresh rebel preparations for an attack in another quarter. Suddenly, when the sun was just sending the last of its rays through the murky clouds of the battle-field, as if in indication that the eye of heaven had not wholly deserted the brotherhood of Cain,—the Federal signal-officers in the distance waved their flags, and other signal-officers in the vicinity repeated their motions. These pantomimic exhibitions, mysterious to the unpractised eye, told to the officers in command, that the Confederates, strongly reinforced by the fresh troops of Jackson and Huger, and their troops inspired by fresh draughts of the maddening gunpowdered whiskey, were being marshalled for another and final attack upon the Federal position.
But a few moments elapsed before the roar of the Confederate batteries gave proof that this warning had not been in vain. Every piece they could bring to bear sent its missiles of death hurtling into the Union lines, the next charge to be made under cover of that cannonade. But probably even they had not calculated upon such a reply as was given by the artillery of McClellan. Never before, since war became a science of butchery, did so many pieces thunder at once upon the devoted ranks of any attacking force. Never before were the very peals of the artillery of heaven so terribly rivalled. Only a portion of the Union guns had before been brought into play: now nearly the whole three hundred belched forth their deadly defiance in crashing and booming repetitions. Those who heard the sound will never forget it; nor will many of them live to hear that sound repeated. Far away among the mountains, a hundred and fifty miles distant, the boom of that terrible cannonade was heard, announcing the conflict to loyalist and rebel who had no other means of knowing that it was in progress. At times the firm earth shook with the continued reverberations, as if an earthquake was passing; and combatants even stood still in the very face of the deadliest danger, under a momentary impression that some fearful convulsion of nature must be in progress and that the sinking sun must be going down on the last day of a crumbling earth.
The rebel artillery was skilfully managed, and their range proved to be excellent; while the management and effect of the Union guns can only be described by one word—magnificent. The superior weight and management of the Federal metal was manifest from one fact if no other—the continual limbering up and changing positions of the rebel pieces, to escape the deadly aim of artillerymen who have probably never been excelled in any service. The only historian who has as yet dealt with the events of that great day,[14] says that it was "madness for the Confederates to rush against such obstacles," and that during the entire day, owing to the weight and superior management of the Federal artillery, they fought "without for a single moment having a chance of success." And yet this was the artillery of an army, and this was the army itself, spoken of by detractors as "defeated" and "demoralized," and utterly incapable of further offensive movements against Richmond, however rested and reinforced!
[14] De Joinville.
Under cover of the smoke of this fire, the mighty hosts of Huger, Jackson and Magruder advanced to the second general assault. Onward they rushed, and, emerging from the sulphurous clouds, rolled forward in heavy columns. They presented a still more imposing front than at the first attack, stretching more than half a mile across the fatal Carter's Field, with scarce a break or an interval in its entire length. On they pressed—steadily, resolutely, desperately—pausing an instant to pour in their fire, and then forward again at quick step. The advance was met with belching volumes from rifles, muskets and batteries, sending such storms of "leaden rain and iron hail" as no body of men on earth could hope to withstand, and joining with the shrieks and shouts of the combatants and the dying, to create such a din as might well have given the impression that the chains of Pandemonium were unloosed and all the lost replying to the thunders of heaven with screams of blasphemy and desperation.
At this moment, too, a new element of terror and destruction broke suddenly into the conflict. As if the powers of the air had indeed begun to take part in the struggle, fiery meteors fell out of the air, from a direction not commanded by the Federal batteries—fiery meteors before which whole ranks of men seemed like stubble before the scythe. One of them would fall hissing through the air, burst with a horrible explosion, and the moment after nothing would remain of the ranks of rebels within thirty or forty feet of it, but a mass of shattered and mangled fragments, limbs torn from limbs and heads from bodies. At first the rebels could not understand the meaning of this new and awful visitation, and even the Union troops were not for the time aware what new power had come to their aid, destroying more of the enemy at a blow than their heaviest and best-served batteries. But the signal officer on the gable of the old mansion on Malvern Hill saw, and soon communicated the fact to the officers in command—that the gun-boats Galena and Aroostook (not the Monitor, as has been sometimes reported), had steamed up from their anchorage at Curl's Neck, two miles below, and opened furious broadsides of shell from their heavy rifled guns. These shells were the terrible missiles working that untold destruction in the rebel ranks; and the horrors and dangers of the fight to them must have been intensely aggravated by these fiery monsters that came tearing and shrieking through the forest and exploded with concussions that shook the earth like discharges from whole batteries. Only after the battle was over could the ravages made by this agency be fully appreciated, from the effects produced on natural objects lying in the line of their course. In many places, avenues rods long and many feet in width, were cut through the tree-tops and branches; and in not a few instances, great trees, three and four feet in diameter, were burst open from branch to root, split to shreds and scattered in splinters in all directions.
Panting, swearing, whooping and bleeding, the Confederate lines had been pushed on, until they had reached a point nearly as far in advance as in the former attack. But here, beneath the storm of canister, case-shot and grape-shot, solid-shot, shell and musketry, human endurance failed and even the madness of intoxication grew useless. The hurricane of metal was too deadly for mortal man to withstand. No efforts could urge them further forward; and finding it impossible to run to the end that gauntlet of iron and lead, they once more wavered and broke, faced about and sought the shelter of the woods, leaving Carter's Field burdened with its second terrible harvest of death for that day—the dead in actual heaps and winrows, and the wounded one mere struggling, writhing and groaning mass.
But why repeat the story that has no variety except in horror? Again and again, with fresh troops flung every time to the front, that mad attempt to carry Malvern Hill was repeated and repulsed. An attack—a repulse; and each time with added but never-varied slaughter. The consumption of raw spirits among the rebel ranks must have been enormous during the day; for every rebel canteen found on the field had been filled with that maddening compound, with or without the fiendish addition of the sulphur and nitre of gunpowder. Their attacks were like the rolling of billows toward a beach: their waves of battle swept up with raging fierceness, but broke and receded at every dash; and, like the waves when the tide is fast ebbing, the surging lines broke farther off at each advance. The attack on Malvern Hill had failed—at what a fearful expenditure of valor and courage on the part of the Union troops, only those who participated can ever know;—and at what a cost of life to the rebels, only that Eye which looked down from a greater height than that of the signal-officer on the gable of the old mansion, could have power to measure!
During the last of these rebel attacks, the gun-boats were signalled to cease firing, lest their shells might prove equally fatal to friends and foes; and the Union forces were ordered to prepare for an advance, as Porter had determined to act, temporarily at least, on the offensive, and thus crown the events of a day which had been virtually one of splendid victory for the Union arms. Just when the rebels were halting and wavering under the effects of the renewed artillery fire poured out to meet them, Burns', Meagher's, Dana's and French's brigades, of the right, were ordered to charge. The order did not come too soon for the brave fellows who had been chafing like caged lions at the necessity of fighting all day on the defensive. Right gallantly and with ringing cheers did they spring forward, until within a hundred yards of the enemy, when they halted and sent a scorching fire of musketry directly into their faces. Couch's division on the left had been thrown forward almost at the same moment, and the order was obeyed with equal alacrity and effect. Then the whole line was ordered to advance, and away they went with ringing shouts, like so many confined school-boys suddenly let out for an hour's play, but going, alas!—to a game of "ball" that entailed death on many of the players.
The brave Irishmen of Meagher were already in the advance, blazing and chopping away with that indomitable good humor which seems to be the normal condition of the Hibernian when fairly launched into his darling fight. In this general advance Duryea's blue, red and baggy Zouaves led the way, as they had done in many a fight before, and always with success,—dashing savagely on the foe with ear-splitting shouts peculiar to themselves, and borrowed from the well-known war-cry of the corresponding regiments in the French service. The long Federal line of bristling steel pushed on at double-quick with irresistible force; and it was only for an instant that any portion of the Confederate line stood to meet it. At last discouraged and appalled—perhaps as much by the appearance and the war-cry of the never-defeated Zouaves as by any other agency that could have been brought to bear upon them,—they first wavered in front, then grew unsteady in the main body, and at last broke and fled in confusion and indecent haste, seeking once more the shelter of the woods from which they were no more to emerge as an attacking party.