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"At three A. M., the reveille, the roll of innumerable drums, and the blow of bugles sounded, and as morning brightened, dark masses of armed men stood in long line. With the first beams of the sun peering over the landscape, they moved from the hills. Disjointed parts were welded together, regiments became brigades, brigades grew into divisions, and divisions became corps.
Chancellorsville was at once seen to be the point for which General Hooker was aiming, and Lee's dispositions were made for confronting him there and fighting a pitched battle. The brigades of Posey and Mahone, of Anderson's Division, had been in front of Banks's and Ely's Fords, and this force of about eight thousand men was promptly ordered to fall back on Chancellorsville.
This was the citizen or "Territorial" army, consisting in time of peace of fourteen divisions of infantry and artillery and fourteen brigades of cavalry, with the appropriate medical, sanitary, transport and other auxiliary services. Those serving in this second-line army were civilians, and, of course, much less disciplined than the officers and men of the first line.
The Staff, the British infantry, one squadron, the guns, and the stores were carried south in steamers and barges. The Egyptian division marched to Wad Hamed by brigades. All the thirteen squadrons of cavalry remained three days at Wad Hamed.
Rations were cooked and the most thorough preparations made for the expected work of the morrow. Sunrise saw the old First in line, ready for the move. Eight o'clock came; no move, Nine Ten, and yet no move. Arms had been stacked, and the men lounged lazily about the stacks. Eagle eyes scanned the surrounding country to ascertain what other Brigades were doing.
Defence, or escort, goes in three bulks or brigades; vanguard, middle, rear-guard, with sparse pickets intervening; wider than five miles, you cannot get the parts to support one another. An enemy breaking in upon you, at some difficult point of road, woody hollow or the like, and opening cannon, musketry and hussar exercise on such an object, must make a confused transaction of it!
We had several hundred prisoners in our hands, and the field was thickly strewn with dead, in gray and in blue, while our field hospital a little down the mountain side was encumbered with hundreds of wounded. We learned from our prisoners that the summit was held by D. H. Hill's division of five brigades with Stuart's cavalry, and that Longstreet's corps was in close support.
As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left the Day Path and took the Night Road.
Meanwhile the enemy, desperate but still confident, poured in a heavy fire from his line and from a battery which enfiladed the Brook road, and made Yellow Tavern an uncomfortably hot place. Gibbs's and Devin's brigades, however, held fast there, while Custer, supported by Chapman's brigade, attacked the enemy's left and battery in a mounted charge.
As long as the brigades dominated the country, and appeared confident and successful, their communications would be respected, and the risings localised; but a check, a reverse, a retreat would raise tremendous combinations on every side.
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