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Front Royal, twelve miles east of Strasburg, was committed to the charge of Colonel Kenly, of the 1st Maryland Regiment in the Federal service, and 1000 rifles and 2 guns were placed at his disposal. The post itself was indefensible.
Colonel Kenly did his best. But he was outflanked and forced back in confusion. A squadron of New York cavalry came to the rescue; but were themselves outflanked and helpless on the road against the Virginian horsemen, who could ride across country.
Stonewall Jackson and an army of twenty thousand men will be upon you in the morning." "What! What is this you say! It was only a cavalry raid at Front Royal!" "It was no cavalry raid at Front Royal, sir! It was Jackson and his whole army! I ought to have known, sir! I should have got there and have warned Kenly in time, but I could not!
In the city life that they planned he would fit in well; his uncle would help him to get on his feet. Fortunately for their peace of mind, they did not know the real truth, that Kenly Lounsbury himself was at that moment struggling with financial problems that were about to overwhelm him.
Up to the time that he heard the far-off sound of their automobile struggling up the long hill, he had made no mental picture of his employers. He rather hoped that Mr. Kenly Lounsbury uncle of the missing man would represent the usual type of middle-aged American with whom he had previously dealt, cold-nerved, likeable business men that came for recreation on the caribou trails.
Kenly, stubbornly firing upon the two columns, that one now quitting, with a breath of relief, the railway bridge, and that issuing under an arch of smoke from the wagon bridge, was hailed by a wild-eyed lieutenant. "Colonel Kenly, sir, look at that!" As he spoke, he tried to point, but his hand waved up and down. The Shenandoah, below the two bridges, was thick with swimming horses.
Kenly, vainly striving to rally a handful about the colours, fell, all but mortally wounded. In the wild quarter of an hour that elapsed before the surrender of the whole, many of the blue were killed, many more wounded. Far and wide the men scattered, but far and wide they were ridden down. One of the guns was taken almost at once, the other a little later, overtaken a mile or two down the road.
They looked at the stars in the west, over the Alleghenies where Fremont, where Milroy and Schenck should be; and at those in the south, over the long leagues of the great Valley, over Harrisonburg, somewhere the other side of which Stonewall Jackson must be; and at those in the east, over the Massanuttons, with the Blue Ridge beyond, and Front Royal in between, where Colonel Kenly was; and at the bright stars in the North, over home, over Connecticut and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, over Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maine.
Yaaaaaih! Thar's the cavalry! Thar's Old Jack!" Jackson and the 6th Virginia came at a gallop out of the woods, down the eastern bank of the stream. The skirmishers, First Maryland, Louisiana, poured down the slope, firing on Kenly as they ran. A number of his men dropped, but he was halfway across and he pressed on, the New York cavalry and Marchmont's small troop acting as rear guard.
The clear notes of the Confederate bugles, succeeded by the crash of musketry, woke the echoes of the Blue Ridge, and the Federal pickets were driven in confusion through the village. The long roll of the drums beat the startled camp to arms, and Kenly hastily drew up his slender force upon a ridge in rear.
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