“Tell General Stuart,” he said, with an air of deep melancholy, to an officer whom he saw passing, “that I had received his dispatch when he turned into the Brock Road, and have halted my infantry here, not wishing to march them unnecessarily.”

Even at that early hour all chance of effective pursuit was lost.  General Meade, without wagons, and not even with the weight of the rations brought over, which the men had consumed, had moved with the rapidity of cavalry, and was already crossing the river far below.  He was afterward asked by a gentleman of Culpepper whether in crossing the Rapidan he designed a real advance.

“Certainly,” he is reported by the gentleman in question to have replied, “I meant to go to Richmond if I could, but Lee’s position was so strong that to storm it would have cost me thirty thousand men.  I could not remain without a battle—­the weather was so cold that my sentinels froze to death on post.”

The pursuit was speedily abandoned by General Lee as entirely impracticable, and the men were marched back between the burning woods, set on fire by the Federal campfires.  The spectacle was imposing—­the numerous fires, burning outerward in the carpet of thick leaves, formed picturesque rings of flame resembling brilliant necklaces; and, as the flames reached the tall trees, wrapped to the summit in dry vines, these would blaze aloft like gigantic torches—­true “torches of war”—­let fall by the Federal commander in his hasty retrograde.

Twenty-four hours afterward the larger part of General Lee’s army were back in their winter-quarters.  In less than a week the Mine-Run campaign had begun and ended.  The movement of General Meade might have been compared to that of the King of France and his forty thousand men in the song; but the campaign was not ill devised, was rather the dictate of sound military judgment.  All that defeated it was the extreme promptness of Lee, the excellent choice of position, and the beginning of that great system of impromptu breastworks which afterward became so powerful an engine against General Grant.

VI.

LEE IN THE AUTUMN AND WINTER OF 1863.

General Lee’s headquarters remained, throughout the autumn and winter of 1863, in a wood on the southern slope of the spur called Clarke’s Mountain, a few miles east of Orange Court-House.

Here his tents had been pitched, in a cleared space amid pines and cedars; and the ingenuity of the “couriers,” as messengers and orderlies were called in the Southern army, had fashioned alleys and walks leading to the various tents, the tent of the commanding general occupying the centre.  Of the gentlemen of General Lee’s staff we have not considered it necessary to speak; but it may here be said that it was composed of officers of great efficiency and of the most courteous manners, from Colonel Taylor, the indefatigable adjutant-general,