forced back, step by step, until they were driven down the slope again.  Here they were attacked by the brigades of Hoke and Atkinson, and driven beyond the railroad, the Confederates cheering and following them into the plain.  The repulse had been complete, and the slope and ground in front of it were strewed with Federal dead.  They had returned as rapidly as they had charged, pursued by shot and shell, and General Lee, witnessing the spectacle from his hill, murmured, in his grave and measured voice:  “It is well this is so terrible! we should grow too fond of it!”

The assault on the Confederate right had thus ended in disaster, but almost immediately another attack took place, whose results were more bloody and terrible still.  As General Meade fell back, pursued by the men of Jackson, the sudden roar of artillery from the Confederate left indicated that a heavy conflict had begun in that quarter.  The Federal troops were charging Marye’s Hill, which was to prove the Cemetery Hill of Fredericksburg.  This frightful charge—­for no other adjective can describe it—­was made by General French’s division, supported by General Hancock.  The Federal troops rushed forward over the broken ground in the suburbs of the city, and, “as soon as the masses became dense enough,"[1] were received with a concentrated artillery fire from the hill in front of them.  This fire was so destructive that it “made gaps that could be seen at the distance of a mile.”  The charging division had advanced in column of brigades, and the front was nearly destroyed.  The troops continued to move forward, however, and had nearly reached the base of the hill, when the brigades of Cobb and Cooke, posted behind a stone wall running parallel with the Telegraph road, met them with a sudden fire of musketry, which drove them back in terrible disorder.  Nearly half the force was killed or lay disabled on the field, and upon the survivors, now in full retreat, was directed a concentrated artillery-fire from, the hill.

[Footnote 1:  Longstreet.]

In face of this discharge of cannon, General Hancock’s force, supporting French, now gallantly advanced in its turn.  The charge lasted about fifteen minutes, and in that time General Hancock lost more than two thousand of the five thousand men of his command.  The repulse was still more bloody and decisive than the first.  The second column fell back in disorder, leaving the ground covered with their dead.

General Burnside had hitherto remained at the “Phillips House,” a mile or more from the Rappahannock.  He now mounted his horse, and, riding down to the river, dismounted, walked up and down in great agitation, and exclaimed, looking at Marye’s Hill:  “That crest must be carried to-night."[1]

[Footnote 1:  The authority for this incident is Mr. William Swinton, who was present.]