a crash of fire, a swift rush through the rolling smoke, and the Federals, crossing the parapet, swept all before them.  Hill’s second line received them with a scattered fire, turned in confusion, and fled back upon the guns.  Then beckoned victory to him who had held his reserves in hand.  Jackson had seen the charge, and Forno’s Louisianians, with a regiment of Lawton’s, had already been sent forward with the bayonet.

In close order the counterstroke came on.  The thinned ranks of the Federals could oppose no resolute resistance.  Fighting they fell back, first to the embankment, where for a few moments they held their own, and then to the wood.  But without supports it was impossible to rally.  Johnson’s and Starke’s brigades swept down upon their flank, the Louisianians, supported by Field and Archer, against their front, and in twenty minutes, with a loss of one-fourth his numbers, Grover in his turn was driven beyond the Warrenton turnpike.

Four divisions, Schurz’, Steinwehr’s, Hooker’s, and Reno’s, had been hurled in succession against Jackson’s front.  Their losses had been enormous.  Grover’s brigade had lost 461 out of 2000, of which one regiment, 288 strong, accounted for 6 officers and 106 men; three regiments of Reno’s lost 530; and it is probable that more than 4000 men had fallen in the wood which lay in front of Hill’s brigades.

The fighting, however, had not been without effect on the Confederates.  The charges to which they had been exposed, impetuous as they were, were doubtless less trying than a sustained attack, pressed on by continuous waves of fresh troops, and allowing the defence no breathing space.  Such steady pressure, always increasing in strength, saps the morale more rapidly than a series of fierce assaults, delivered at wide intervals of time.  But such pressure implies on the part of the assailant an accumulation of superior force, and this accumulation the enemy’s generals had not attempted to provide.  In none of the four attacks which had shivered against Hill’s front had the strength of the assailants been greater than that of his own division; and to the tremendous weight of such a stroke as had won the battles of Gaines’ Mill or Cedar Run, to the closely combined advance of overwhelming numbers, Jackson’s men had not yet been subjected.

The battle, nevertheless, had been fiercely contested, and the strain of constant vigilance and close-range fighting had told on the Light Division.  The Federal skirmishers, boldly advancing as Pender’s men fell back, had once more filled the wood, and their venomous fire allowed the defenders no leisure for repose.* (* “The Federal sharpshooters at this time,” says Colonel McCrady, of the Light Division, “held possession of the wood, and kept up a deadly fire of single shots whenever any one of us was exposed.  Every lieutenant who had to change position did so at the risk of his life.  What was my horror, during an interval in the attack,