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Updated: June 17, 2025
The retreat was conducted in good order, a strong rear-guard, reinforced by two batteries of horse-artillery, holding the Confederates in check, and before morning a second position, east of Powhite Creek, and covering two bridges over the Chickahominy, Alexander's and Grapevine, was occupied by the Fifth Army Corps. June 27, 5 A.M.
Wilson's troops were driven back in some confusion at first; but Gregg, in anticipation of attack, had hidden a heavy line of dismounted men in a bushy ravine on his front, and when the enemy marched upon it, with much display and under the eye of the President of the Confederacy, this concealed line opened a destructive fire with repeating carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect.
On the evening of the 21st Ashby reported to Jackson that the enemy was retreating, and information came to hand that a long train of waggons, containing the baggage of 12,000 men, had left Winchester for Castleman's Ferry on the Shenandoah. March 22. On the 22nd, Ashby, with 280 troopers and 3 horse-artillery guns, struck Shields' pickets about a mile south of Winchester.
The cowed infantry remained supine, when their officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge! which so rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray. The gunners only, men of that noble force the Company's Horse-Artillery, quitted themselves valiantly.
A small force consisting of portions of the 10th Hussars, Guides' cavalry, 17th Foot, forty-five Sikhs, together with a battery of horse-artillery, were sent on from Jellalabad, as an advance force to clear the road to Kabul. About twelve miles out, at the village of Fattehabad, General Gough was suddenly threatened in flank by a great gathering of Afghan tribesmen.
When the rear-guard moved away in the twilight, an officer and fifty men were left dead in the snow, the victims of the Afghan fire from the rampart of the cantonment; and owing to casualties in the gun teams it had been found necessary to spike and abandon two of the horse-artillery guns.
Alongside them came another long column of ambulance-carts drawn by mules, beyond which, again, marched the auxiliary branch of the medical service, the camels, soft-footed and supercilious, with the white hoods of the cacolets swaying unevenly as they marched. Then came the light armoured-car batteries and in the centre the horse-artillery.
Under these leaders, and assisted by the hard-fighting "Stuart Horse-Artillery" under Pelham and his successors, the cavalry had borne their full share in the hard marches and combats of the army.
The gallant troop of Company's Horse-Artillery marched out with its full complement of six guns, to which, with three pieces of the mountain train, the artillery arm of the departing force was restricted by the degrading terms imposed by the Afghan chiefs.
A little later the brigades of Gregg and Gibbs, falling to the rear slowly and steadily, took up in the woods a line which covered the Boydton Road some distance to the right of Capehart, the intervening gap to be filled with Pennington's brigade. By this time our horse-artillery, which for two days had been stuck in the mud, was all up, and every gun was posted in this line.
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