Page:A narrative of service with the Third Wisconsin Infantry.djvu/89

 about ten o'clock the next morning it was discovered that the enemy were moving wagon trains toward the southwest. Birney's Division of the Fifth Corps, which had been in position somewhere in our rear, was sent out at about noon to stop them. A sharp musketry fire for a minute or two indicated to us that the attack had been made, and soon after several hundred Southern prisoners were sent back to us under guard. At about four in the afternoon, our Regiment was ordered to deploy as skirmishers through the woods upon the left of Birney, to capture Confederate stragglers who were believed to be lurking there in large numbers. Obedient to these orders we piled up our knapsacks, overcoats, and other baggage, behind the breastworks we had built, and moved forward into the woods. We had advanced about half a mile from our entrenchments, when the storm broke loose in the rear. The army of Stonewall Jackson had struck the Eleventh Corps in the flank and rear, and had brushed it away like a swarm of flies before a hurricane. I was afterward told that the defeated Corps came tumbling along through the woods, an