All gone?  No!  In the hush which came after Reynolds’s desperate defence, and while hearts were yet beating fast from watching the doubtful fight, there arose far off to the right and rear a roar of musketry, telling that somewhere in the distance the flags of the Army of the Cumberland still waved before the foe, as they did with us.  Long afterward we knew that this was Thomas—­he who would not leave the field amid the wreck which surrounded him—­Thomas, with his fragments, posted on a commanding ridge and bravely beating off the thickening foes about him.

The story of the disaster is an old one.  It is hardly necessary to tell how Wood, in the main line on the right of Brannan, received an order from Rosecrans to support Reynolds, the second division in line to the left of Wood; how the gallant soldier hesitated to obey an order from which such disaster might come; how McCook, chief of corps, told Wood the order was imperative, and promised to put a reserve division into the line to take his place; how Wood withdrew from the line, as ordered, at the fatal moment when the enemy was preparing to attack; how the furious foe pressed through the gap, cut the army in two, struck the lines to right and left in flank and rear, swept the centre, the right wing and the reserves off the field, and doubled up and crushed the left wing as far as Reynolds’s division, whose fortune has been told.  All this is familiar enough now, but those who remained on the field in the four divisions of the left knew nothing of it then.  They only knew that the line was broken beyond Reynolds, and that, although somewhere in the distance was a force which had not yet fled nor surrendered, they were left to bear alone the battle against Bragg’s victorious army.  The odds were five or six to one—­perhaps more, maybe less.  It did not matter to be precise:  Bragg had men enough to put a double line of troops entirely around the four divisions.  That was enough.

It was after midday when the disaster was complete and the divisions of Baird, Johnson, Palmer and Reynolds were able to understand the situation.  I need not recount in detail the repeated attempts of the enemy to crush the line of the four divisions at one point and another.  If the reader can recall the description of the first attack on Palmer’s division, he will have a very fair example of the work which busied us at intervals during those long hours.  The enemy was, of course, not unaware of his great success in dividing the army and driving off the greater part of it; nor was he lacking in efforts to improve the advantage by destroying the divisions which yet confronted him.  Every attack, however, resulted in failure, and the assailants retired each time with heavy losses.  At length it was evident to us that it had become difficult to bring even Longstreet’s boasted troops up to attacks which met such sure and bloody repulses.  There were but four divisions against an army, but the four would not be taken or driven.