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Updated: June 23, 2025


In the course of our progress, our men kept picking off the French videttes, who were imprudent enough to hover too near us; and many a horse, bounding along the plain, dragging his late rider by the stirrup-irons, contributed in making it a scene of extraordinary and exhilarating interest.

A line of videttes was posted along the front, and so keenly did the officers feel the responsibility, that they made no attempt to sleep but were in the saddle constantly. It would have been a smart confederate who could have surprised the Michiganders that night. Every faculty was on the alert.

After the battle, and before the siege, the scout Alexander Godey and three other trappers had set out on foot, using their best skill, to take the word to San Diego; but they had been captured by the Pico videttes, and nobody upon the hill knew whether the Stockton relief was coming. A second try should be made. With the General Kearny dragoons there was the famous Kit Carson.

We did not go far before we found the enemy's infantry posted across these two roads behind a strong line of intrenchments on the west bank of Bailey's Creek. His videttes in front of Ruffin's house on the New Market road were soon driven in on their main line, and the high ground before the house was immediately occupied by Torbert and Gregg, supported by Kautz's division.

What sense was there in summoning in upon the center, where they could be of no earthly use, those two thousand horsemen, who should have been dispersed upon our flank, leagues away, as videttes to observe the enemy?

A dozen videttes were distributed on the flat roofs, and nearly fifty warriors, hastily armed and equipped, had scattered at some distance from the buildings along the hills throughout the basin, to intercept a possible flight, as well as to guard approaches in case the two prisoners should be merely advance scouts of a larger body of enemies.

Wild fowl crossed the sky in wedge and battalion, their videttes out, their lines now firm, now wheeling in a long curve to take the path of the wind. Every thicket was a fount of song that fell to silence when darkness came and the low chant of the marshes. When they came into settled country below the big woods they began selling.

Still there were no videttes, nor any look-out party, so far as we could see; and our commanding officer didn't well know what to make of it, whether it was a point of concealed strength, or a position they were about to withdraw from.

On this part of the line it was not the custom to station videttes in front of the picket pits at night, as was usually done. A constant fire was kept up day and night. The boys used to invent various contrivances for the special benefit of the "graybacks."

Thus passed before me the famous Croatian companies the Pandours, together forming the finest outpost troops of the army the free companies of the Tyrol, the first marksmen of the empire, a fine athletic race, with the eagle's feather in their broad hats, and the sinewy step of the mountaineer the lancers of the Bannat, first-rate videttes, an Albanian division, which had taken service with Austria on the close of the war; and, independently of all name and order, a cloud of wild cavalry, Turk, Christian, and barbarian, who followed the campaign for its chances, and galloped, sported, and charged each other like the Arabs of the desert.

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