Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/551

Rh the morning, or quickly retired with the grand honors he had won.

Early's men retreated up the Valley, in and by ways that no man can describe, during the whole night, but they nearly all answered to roll calls the next day in their old camps at New Market. Rosser brought up the rear with his cavalry, which the enemy's cavalry slowly followed to Edenburg and the line of Stony creek, where Rosser had halted. Sheridan was quite content to rest, the next day, and reorganize his demoralized army, in his old Cedar creek camps. His pursuit of the retreating Confederates was without vigor or results.

Having learned, by sad experience, the weakness of his former position, Sheridan, on the 21st, brought his infantry across Cedar creek and took and fortified, with great care, a new position on Hupp's and the adjoining hills, between Strasburg and Cedar creek, so slowly had he learned the lesson of the important part that the topographical element plays in war, and which Early so well understood and had made such good use of in the two attacks he had made on Sheridan's Cedar creek camp. Lomax's division of cavalry, which came from Front Royal to the vicinity of Middletown on the 19th, but too late to be of any value in Early's attack on Sheridan, fell back by the way it advanced to Milford, in the Page valley, where it took and fortified a position which the Federal cavalry, following, attacked on the 26th, but was repulsed. All was quiet in the infantry camps up to that date, when Rosser's brigade marched from its camp near Timberville across, by New Market, to Luray.

The army remained undisturbed in its camps in the vicinity of New Market, holding the line of Stony creek with its cavalry, as well as its position at Milford in the Page valley, and at points along the Rappahannock, east of the Blue ridge, until the 10th of November, on which day Early again marched down the valley, with Kershaw's division in front, and bivouacked in the vicinity of Woodstock, Rosser's cavalry advancing to Fairview on the back road, and Lomax's to Front Royal in the Page valley. Marching again at 6 a. m. of the 11th, Pegram in advance, preceded by Payne's brigade of cavalry. Early drove the enemy's pickets from Middletown and up to a line of fortifications that Sheridan was holding beyond Newtown. He then formed a line of battle between