Page:A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence in the Confederate States of America.djvu/92

88 roads furnished my only means of retreat in the event of disaster. My line did not reach the Front Royal road on the right, or the Martinsburg road on the left.

When the order was sent for the troops to move from Stephenson's depot, General Breckenridge had moved to the front, with "Wharton's division and King's artillery, to meet a cavalry force which had driven our pickets from the Opequon on the Charlestown road, and that division had become heavily engaged with the enemy, and sustained and repulsed several determined charges of his cavalry, while its own flanks were in great danger from the enemy's main force on the right, and a column of his cavalry moving up the Martinsburg road on the left. After much difficulty and some hard fighting, Gen. Breckenridge succeeded in extricating his force and moving up the Martinsburg road to join me, but lie did not reach the field until about two o'clock in the afternoon.

In the meantime there had been heavy skirmishing along the line, and the reports from the front were that the enemy was massing for another attack, but it was impossible to tell where it would fall. As the danger from the enemy's cavalry on the right was very great and Lomax's force very weak, Wickham's brigade of Fitz Lee's cavalry had been sent from the left to Lomax's assistance. When Wharton's division arrived, Patton's brigade of that division was left to aid Fitz Lee in guarding the Martinsburg road, against the force of cavalry which was advancing on that road watched by Lomax's two small brigades; and the rest of the division was formed in rear of Rodes' division in the centre, in order to be moved to any point that might be attacked. Late in the afternoon, two divisions of the enemy's cavalry drove in the small force which had been watching it on the Martinsburg road, and Crook's corps, which had not been engaged, advanced ;it the same time on that flank, on the north side of Red Bud, and, before this overwhelming force, Patton's brigade of infantry and Payne's brigade of cavalry under Fitz Lee were forced back. A considerable force of the enemy's cavalry then swept along the Martinsburg road to the very skirts of Winchester, thus getting in the rear of our left flank. Wharton's two other