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Updated: June 21, 2025
Again the Confederate front was broken, but again their reserves drove back the Federals. And so the fight went on, with stroke and counterstroke, till, at a quarter past five, twelve hours after Pope's first men had started from the Henry Hill, his thirty thousand attackers found themselves unable to break through. Pope wished to make one more effort to round up Jackson's supposedly open right.
The orders indicated that counterstrokes were not to be pushed so far as to involve the troops in an engagement with the enemy's reserves, and the subordinate generals were encouraged, without waiting for orders, and thus losing the occasion, to seize all favourable opportunities for counterstroke. The methods employed by Jackson were singularly like those of Wellington.
There is but one thing certain, that with an opponent so blind to opportunity as McClellan a strong counterstroke was the last thing to be feared.
The 10,000 men of the Light Division, however, were still some distance to the rear, and the position was hardly secure against a counterstroke. The left of the line extended along a skirt of woodland, which ran at right angles to the road, overlooking a wheat-field but lately reaped, on the further side of which, and three hundred yards distant, was dense wood.
Several of the blows aimed by England had been more or less abortive; but one at least had been staggering, and every attempt at a counterstroke had ended in plain disaster.
The enemy's aggressive strength was evidently exhausted; and then arose the question, Could the Confederates attack? It would seem that the possibility of a great counterstroke had already been the subject of debate, and that Lee, despite the failure of the previous evening, and Jackson's adverse report, believed that the Federal right might be outflanked and overwhelmed.
"Why that of course," said he. "And what else?" I asked; for I could see that he had not said all. "A counterstroke," he said. "But of what kind? You say the rising will be pretty soon." "I do not suppose for a week or two at the most. They were decided, I am sure; but no more." Suddenly the man slapped his leg; and his eyes grew little with his smile. "I have it for sure," he said.
Sir Frederick Roberts, with the eye of the born general seizing the right moment, launched his cavalry and artillery in counterstroke and pursuit, till when the sun set that night fifty thousand of the chivalry of the Afghan nation had been swept from sight and hearing, and nothing but a vast solitude remained where teeming thousands stood lately.
These examples will also serve to illustrate and enforce the second essential of this kind of war. As has been already said, for a true limited object we must have not only the power of isolation, but also the power by a secure home defence of barring an unlimited counterstroke. In all the above cases this condition existed.
There were moments, too, during the fight when a strong counterstroke, made by fresh troops, would have placed Lee's army in the greatest peril. Porter was perhaps a more than sufficient substitute for the Commander-in-Chief.
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