Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/497

 a man to send, I ordered the regiment to fall back to the edge of the woods in its rear, which it did in perfect order, facing about and firing several times as it retired.

In the meantime, the enemy completely turned my left flank, and had not the rebel general, Colquitt, who commanded a force of seventeen regiments to execute that flanking movement, made the mistake of stopping his advance for a while, believing that his right was threatened, a large part of the Eleventh Corps might have been captured before it could have reached the open ground surrounding the Chancellor house. But the Confederate force which actually did attack my left was far more than strong enough to press back the One Hundred and Nineteenth New York, and to fall upon the left of Captain Dilger's battery. Captain Dilger kept up his fire with grape and canister to the last moment. He gave the order to limber up only when the enemy's infantry was already between his pieces. His horse was shot under him, and the two wheel- horses and a lead-horse of one of his guns were killed. After an ineffectual effort to drag this piece along with the dead horses hanging in the harness, he had to abandon it to the enemy. The rest of the battery he sent to the rear, with the exception of one piece, which he kept in the road, firing against the pursuing enemy from time to time as he retreated.

The rebels were now pressing forward in overwhelming power on our right and left, and the position in and near the church-grove could no longer be held. We had to fall back upon the shallow rifle pit running north and south near Dowdall's Tavern, which had been dug when General Howard had a dawning suspicion that we might be attacked by Jackson from the west. This rifle pit was partly occupied by Colonel Buschbeck's brigade of our second division. It stood on the extreme left of the corps, had ample time to change front,