"See Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone wall! Let us conquer or die!"
The words had scarcely passed his lips when Bee fell, mortally wounded.
Four miles away on the top of a lonely hill sat Beauregard and Johnston befogged in a series of pitiable blunders.
The flanking of the Southern army was a complete and overwhelming surprise. Johnston, unacquainted with the ground, had yielded the execution of the battle to his subordinate.
While the two puzzled generals were waiting on their hill top for their orders of battle to be developed on the right they looked to the left and the whole valley was a boiling hell of smoke and dust and flame. Their left flank had been turned and the triumphant enemy was rolling their long line up in a shroud of flame and death.
The two Generals put spurs to their horses and dashed to the scene of action, sending their couriers flying to countermand their first orders. They reached the scene at the moment Bee's and Evans' shattered lines were taking refuge in a wooded ravine and Jackson had moved his men into a position to breast the shock of the enemy's avalanche.
In his excitement Johnston seized the colors of the fourth Alabama regiment and offered to lead them in a charge.
Beauregard leaped from his horse, faced the troops and shouted:
"I have come to die with you!"
The first of the reserves were rushing to the front in a desperate effort to save the day. But in spite of the presence of the two Commanding Generals, in spite of the living stone wall Jackson had thrown in the path of the Union hosts, a large part of the crushed left wing could not be stopped and in mad panic broke for the rear toward Manassas Junction.