Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/140

 a few moments I was heavily engaged on my right and centre. The enemy, posted behind hastily constructed breastworks, opened a heavy fire of both small arms and artillery. For half an hour, the firing was the heaviest I ever heard. It was dark, however, and accurate shooting impossible. Each side was aiming at the flashes of the other, and few of the shot from either side took effect. Two of my batteries were run forward within sixty yards of the enemy's line and opened a rapid fire.” Cleburne, according to his own story, drove the enemy for a mile and a half, when, his command having got confused by the advance in the darkness, and his artillery finding it impracticable to move further in the woods, he stopped, readjusted his lines and bivouacked. He claims that he captured three guns, two flags, and between two and three hundred prisoners, and that it was nine o'clock before firing on his front ceased.

Cleburne had struck Johnson's division and the left of Baird's. A terrible roar suddenly arose in front of them. The three brigades of the former and Scribner's of the latter found themselves instantly exposed to a fearful shower of bullets and crashing shot and bursting shell, and immediately thereafter furiously assailed by yelling infantry in front and flank. Johnson's left, formed by the brigade of Willich, had remained unprotected all the afternoon, although its commander repeatedly called attention to its exposure. The first rebel onset swept our first line back upon the reserves with heavy losses, but it then appears to have stood its ground till the enemy stopped fighting. The attack evidently threw our troops into great confusion, and many more of them were taken prisoners than Cleburne brought off, the greater number escaping in the darkness. Our line got so mixed up that Willich's and Scribner's commands fired into Baird's second brigade and made it retreat in disorder.

This night fight — one of the most extraordinary incidents of the war — closed the day's struggle. It had been mostly a