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I then determined to march directly to Rossville, and from there effect a junction with Thomas by the Lafayette road. I reached Rossville about o'clock in the afternoon, bringing with me eight guns, forty-six caissons, and a long ammunition train, the latter having been found in a state of confusion behind the widow Glenn's when I was being driven back behind the Dry Valley road.
They should, as a matter of course, make sure, by frequent inspections, that the matériel of all the arms of the service is in good order: horses, carriages, caissons, teams, harness, shoes, &c. should be carefully examined and any deficiencies supplied.
Prentiss fell back and made a stand immediately in front of his camp. After a gallant but short struggle, his division, about nine o'clock, gave way and fell back through his camp, leaving behind Powell's guns and caissons and two of Hickenlooper's guns, all the horses of Hickenlooper's two guns being killed. The line was broken and disordered by the tents.
The stragglers who flocked in masses to the banks of the Beresina found there, unhappily, an immense number of carriages, caissons, and articles of all kinds which the army had been forced to abandon when effecting its passage of the river on the 27th and 28th of November.
She left her congressmen's carriages, her wagons of subsistence, and her wagons of ammunition, her guns and their caissons, her flags and her wounded in ambulances; she cut the traces of the horses and freed them from pleasure carriage, gun carriage, ammunition wagon, and ambulance; with these horses and afoot, she dashed through the water of Cub Run, and with the long wail of the helpless behind her, fled northward through the dusk.
About two o'clock General Gérard returned, and our line was obliqued a third time more to the right, and then the whole division broke into columns, and we followed the road to Fleurus with the cannon and caissons at intervals between the brigades. The dust enveloped us completely. Buche said to me: "Cost what it may, I must drink at the first puddle we come to." But we did not find any water.
Indeed, the great number of horses and vehicles could not be kept on the limited space within Custer's line, which now formed almost a complete circle; and while he was endeavoring to remove them to a secure place they, together with Custer's headquarters wagon and four of his caissons, fell into the hands of their original owners.
Then the Federals sprang forward in a fierce charge, driving the Confederates back in confusion over their own guns, two of which were captured with their caissons and ammunition. The loss of his guns threw Forrest into a violent rage, in which he made the air blue with his forcible opinions. Those guns must be taken back, he swore, at the risk of all their lives.
All I could perceive, however, was a disabled gun, a broken mitrailleuse, and two badly damaged caissons. Everything else, except a little ammunition in the trenches, had been carried away, and it was plain to see, from the good shape in which the French left wing had retired to Metz, that its retreat had been predetermined by the disasters to the right wing.
He ordered the caissons into line with the guns and deployed his regiments so that they bore the appearance of a division of cavalry, the mounted artillerists bearing down upon the French at a gallop, with drawn swords. Failing to see the guns, and thinking that they had only cavalry to deal with, the French closed their lines and with fixed bayonets awaited the Swedes.
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