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Weitzel had followed slowly after Mouton, and now, in connection with gunboats, made little attacks on our pickets below Bisland; but I knew his force to be too small to attempt anything serious. In these affairs Fuller was always forward with the Cotton, though her boilers were inadequately protected, and she was too large and unwieldy to be handled in the narrow Teche.
While these events were bringing the Mississippi squadron into that part of the river which Farragut had aimed to control, other movements were leading to his assistance some of the lighter vessels of his own command. After the naval action at Port Hudson, Banks had temporarily abandoned his designs upon that post in favor of operations west of the Mississippi by the Bayous Teche and Atchafalaya, the latter of which communicates with the Red River a few miles above its mouth. This movement was accompanied by a force of four gunboats, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander A. P. Cooke, of the Estrella, which captured a post on the Atchafalaya called Butte
While there, he had the unfinished ironclad gunboat Stevens, previously known as the Hart, floated two miles down the Teche, destroyed by fire, and the wreck sunk in the channel. On the 16th he marched twenty miles, crossed the Vermilion River, went into camp on high ground on the north bank, and burned the bridges behind him.
No one knows this but myself no one shall know. In society he is ze elegant young man: yes, people who admire him little dream when he is away, and they think him on his plantation up ze Bayou Têche, zat he is in a private madhouse in ze city, watched over by poor Véra." She raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and Lilly and I looked at each other with deep, silent sympathy.
In the "Report on the Conduct of the War," vol. ii., pp. 309 and 310, the Federal General Banks makes the following statements: "During these operations on the Teche we captured over twenty-five hundred prisoners and twenty-two guns; destroyed three gunboats and eight steamers"; and further: "A dispatch from Governor Moore to General Taylor was intercepted, in which Taylor was directed to fall back into Texas." At the time, my entire force in western Louisiana was under three thousand, and it is rather startling to learn that we were all captured. Two twenty-fours and one field gun were abandoned at Bisland, and two twenty-fours lost at Butte
This left me with but one mounted regiment, Vincent's 2d Louisiana, and some independent companies, which last were organized into two regiments one, on the Washita, by Colonel Harrison, the other, on the Teche, by Colonel Bush; but they were too raw to be effective in the approaching campaign.
There was shade. Under his trudging feet was the wagon-road along the farther levee of the Teche. Above him great live-oaks stretched their arms clad in green vestments and gray drapings, the bright sugar-cane fields were on his left, and on his right the beautiful winding bayou.
General Banks will start by land from Franklin, in the Teche country, either the 6th or 7th, and will march via Opelousas to Alexandria. You will meet him there, report to him, and act under his orders. My understanding with him is that his forces will move by land, via Natchitoches, to Shreveport, while the gunboat-fleet is to ascend the river with your transports in company.
John did not answer. It merely gathered into its silent bosom another broken-hearted romance, and flowed dispassionately on its way. When the sun goes down behind the great oaks along the Bayou Teche near Franklin, it throws red needles of light into the dark woods, and leaves a great glow on the still bayou. Ma'am Mouton paused at her gate and cast a contemplative look at the red sky.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 13th of January the crossing of Berwick Bay began; by half-past ten the gunboats had completed the ferriage of the cavalry and artillery; the infantry following landed at Pattersonville; then the whole force formed in line and, moving forward in the afternoon to the junction of the Teche with the Atchafalaya, went into bivouac.
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