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Ricketts and Griffin, cannoneers on caissons, horses urged to a gallop, thundered down the opposite slope, across Young's Branch and the turnpike. A moment and they were lost to sight, another and the straining horses and the dust and the guns and the fighting men about them showed above the brow of the Henry Hill.
General Gregg, on our right, went about twenty-two miles on the road to Chambersburg, and returning early on the morning of the fourth, reported that the road was strewn with wounded and stragglers, ambulances and caissons, and general débris, which indicated that the enemy was retreating as rapidly as possible, and was passing through a terrible season of demoralization.
With death raining down on them from opposite but converging points, the German infantrymen broke wildly for cover. Their less fortunate comrades, the cannoneers and drivers of caissons and supply wagons, stuck to their posts, trying to calm the rearing, plunging horses and cursing the inexorable wasps that sent stinging death down on them. Yancey, in particular, seemed to be in his glory.
General S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector-General C.S.A., Richmond, Va.: GENERAL: I have seen in Northern papers what purported to be an official dispatch from General Meade, stating that he had captured a brigade of Infantry, two pieces of artillery, two caissons, and a large number of small-arms, as this army retired to the south bank of the Potomac, on the 13th and 14th inst.
After the dragoons passed, there was an interval of two minutes, when a troop of flying artillery, with three six pound field pieces, rattled after the leading squadron, the horses all in a lather, at full speed, with the guns bounding and jumping behind them as if they had been playthings, followed by their caissons.
Six of these guns I turned over with caissons complete; eleven were hauled off the field and appropriated by an officer of high rank General Hazen. I have no disposition to renew the controversy which grew out of this matter.
All along the precipitous bluff which overhangs Tumbling Run on the south side, a heavy line of earthworks had been constructed when Early retreated to this point in August, and these were now being strengthened so as to make them almost impregnable; in fact, so secure did Early consider himself that, for convenience, his ammunition chests were taken from the caissons and placed behind the breastworks.
A moment afterwards, a regiment of lancers passed at a trot, with their pennons fluttering in the breeze, and their lance-heads glimmering like stars above the clouds of dust which rose from under their horses' hoofs; and these were followed by several squadrons of hussars, with their crimson trousers and their gaily furred pelisses, and then troop after troop of horse-artillery clattering along, the high-bred horses whirling the heavy guns and caissons behind them as if they had been mere playthings.
Here we found much ammunition for field-pieces, which was destroyed; also two caissons, and a general hospital, with about two hundred and eighty Confederate wounded, and about fifty of our own wounded men.
When you have seen him in motion follow him. Find men you can trust, and the moment Fournier had crossed the bridge, burn, without pity, huts, equipages, caissons, carriages, EVERYTHING! Drive that mass of men to the bridge. Compel all that has two legs to get to the other side of the river. The burning of everything EVERYTHING is now our last resource.
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