Page:A memoir of the last year of the War of Independence, in the Confederate States of America.djvu/97

Rh Abraham's Creek to Red Bud and were very attenuated. The enemy was still to be seen in front in formidable force, and, away to our right, across Abraham's creek, at the junction of the Front Royal and Millwood roads, he had massed a division of cavalry with some artillery, overlapping us at least a mile, while the country was open between this force and the Vallev Pike, and the Cedar Creek Pike back of the latter; which 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 he 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