The scene, while extraordinarily vivid to Harry, was nevertheless wild and confused. The fire of the cannon and rifles on a long line was so rapid and terrific that he was almost blinded by the incessant blaze, which was like one solid sheet of flame. The dense smoke gathered once more among the bushes and trees and the forest was filling with a tremendous shouting.
Harry kept as close as he could to his general, who was now in the very heart of the conflict. But it was a difficult task. His clothing was torn by bushes and briars, and boughs whipped him across the face. Now and then in a rift in the smoke he beheld a terrible sight. The ground was covered with the arms and blankets and tents of the Union army. Ahead of them were great masses of men, retreating and jammed among the wagons. The horses, many of them wounded, were running about, neighing in pain and terror. Officers, their uniforms often red from wounds, were rushing everywhere, seeking to stay the panic.
Yet the Union officers at last succeeded in getting some order out of the chaos. A battery was rallied on a hill and threw a sleet of steel on the charging men in gray. Some of the seasoned infantry regiments were managing to form a line and they were beginning to send back a rifle fire. Harry felt that the resistance in front of them was hardening a little.
But as usual the eye of Jackson saw everything, even through the flame and smoke and confusion of a battle fought in dense forests and thickets.
He galloped up the turnpike himself, his staff hot at his heels, and shouting to the gunners and pointing forward, he urged on the artillery. Then he rode among the infantry, and they, as eager as he, rushed on at increased speed. Yet the Northern resistance was still hardening. Some of the German regiments atoned for their earlier panic by reforming and making a brave resistance. Other regiments formed behind a breastwork.
“They are going to make a bold stand,” shouted Harry to Dalton.
“But it will not help them,” the Virginian replied.
The Southern battle front, which for a few minutes had lost cohesion, now swelled higher than ever. Led by Jackson in person, nearly all the officers in front sword in hand, the whole division with a mighty shout charged. Harry saw the Invincibles in the first line, the two colonels, one on either flank, waving their swords and their faces young again with the battle fire. But it was only a glimpse. Then they were lost from his sight in the fire and smoke.
There could be no sufficient defense against the charge of such a foe, numerous, prepared and wild with victory. They swept over the breastwork, they seized the cannon, they took prisoners, and before them they swept the right wing of the Union army in irreparable rout and confusion. Harry had not seen its like in the whole war, nor was he destined to see it again. An entire corps had been annihilated. The Wilderness was filled with the fragments of regiments seeking to join the main force with Hooker at Chancellorsville.
Harry thought Jackson would stop. They were now in the deep woods. The sun was almost gone. The shadows from the east had crept over the whole sky, and it was already dark among the dense thickets of the Wilderness. An hour had passed since the first rush, and few generals would have had the daring to push on in the forest, dark already and rapidly growing darker. But Jackson was one of the few. He continued to urge on his men, and he sent his staff officers galloping back and forth to help in the task. There was a road in the very rear of Hooker. He intended to seize it, and he was resolved before the night closed down utterly to plant himself so firmly against the very center of the Union army that Hooker’s complete defeat in the morning would be sure.
The bugles sang the charge again all along the Southern line, and in the dying twilight, lit by the flame of cannon and rifles, they swept forward, driving all resistance before them.