cleared away by Captain Alexander, of the engineers, and Schenck's brigade (the third of Tyler's division) was about to pass over and join Keyes.

But one rash movement had decided the day-that movement the last change of position given to Griffin's battery, throwing it help less into a murderous fire, which no protecting force could encounter.

When the Zouaves broke on that fatal hill, the Union cause for that day wavered. When hordes of fresh troops poured in upon the Union battalions, beating back as brave regiments as ever trod the battle-field, one after another, overwhelming them with numbers, and driving them headlong into utter confusion, the battle was lost; and after this any description of it must be wild and turbulent as the scene itself—in no other way can a true picture of the tumultuous fighting and more tumultuous retreat be truly given.

THE CLIMAX AND THE RETREAT.

We have described the battle of Manassas, Stone Bridge, or Bull Run, as it is variously called, in its plain details, giving each regiment, so far as possible, its share in the glorious fight; for, up to mid-day and after, no braver fighting was ever done than the Union troops performed on that 21st of July. Now a wilder, more difficult, and very painful effort taxes the pen. The heat, turmoil and terrible storm of death rolls up in a tumultuous picture-troops in masses-stormy actionthe confused rush of men-all these things have no detail, but hurl the writer forward, excited and unrestrained as the scene to be described.

At high noon the battle raged in its widest circumference. The batteries on the distant hills began to pour their volleys on the Union troops with terrible effect. Carlisle's and Sherman's batteries answered with tremendous emphasis, while the great 32-pounder hurled its iron thunderbolts first into one of the enemy's defences, then into another, tearing up everything as they went. The noise of the cannonading grew deafening, and kept up one incessant roll. Compared to it the sharp volleys of riflemen were like the rattle of hail amid the loud bursts of a thunder tempest. The people of Centreville, Fairfax, Alexandria, and even Washington, heard the fearful reverberations, and trembled at the sound.

Five powerful batteries were in operation at once, joined to the hiss and hurtle of twenty thousand small arms! No wonder the sky turned black, impalled with death-smoke-no wonder the sun shone fierce and red upon the pools of warm human blood that began to gather around those batteries, where the slain were lying in heaps and winrows!

Still amid this roar and carnage, the Federal forces were making

sure headway, and driving the enemy before them. Except one brigade of Tyler's division, the entire force of eighteen thousand men was in fierce action. As the Union forces pressed upon the enemy, approaching each moment to the completion of their plan of battle, the rebels grew desperate. The batteries on the western hills poured forth their iron tempest with accumulated fury. The Union guns answered them with fiercer thunder. The roar of the cannonading was deafening, drowning the volleys of riflemen, and sweeping off in one overpowering sound the rattle and crash of musketry. The clamor of the guns was appalling-the rush and tumult of action more appalling still. The whole valley was like a vast volcano, boiling over with dust and smoke. Through this turbid atmosphere battalions charged each other and batteries poured their hot breath on the air, making it denser than before. Now and then the dust would roll away from the plain, and the smoke float off from the hills, revealing a dash of cavalry across some open space, or a charge of infantry up to a fortified point where the struggle, success, or repulse, was lost or vaguely seen through vol umes of rolling smoke-columns of ruddy dust trailed after the infantry, broken now and then by the fiery track of a battery masked in foliage. A sullen report, and horrid gaps appeared in what a moment before was a living wall of men. A curl of blue vapor rose gracefully from the trees, and it was only the dead bodies blackening the ground that made the sight so awful.

But the fight gathered fiercest on the westward hill, from which the booming thunder rolled in long incessant peals. Its sides swarmed. with armed men, changing positions, charging and retreating. Curtains of smoke, swayed by the wind, revealed the horses around a battery, rearing, plunging and falling headlong, dozens together, in one hideous death. Then in mercy the smoke drifted over the hill again. The enemy were giving ground at every point. The Mississippians had fled in dismay from the batteries, and desperately taken to the field in wavering columns. Other regiments were actually fleeing before the Union troops, but they were generally moving with sullen steadiness to the rear. The entire line which arrayed itself against Tyler in the morning had been relinquished, except one fortified elevation. Still their peculiar mode of warfare was kept up. Masked batteries were constantly opening in unexpected places, leaving heaps of slain in the track of their fiery hail.

On the uplands whole regiments, seen from the distance, seemed to drive against or drift by each other, leaving beautiful curls and clouds of smoke behind; but under this smoke lay so many dead bodies that the soul grew faint in counting them.

Through all this the Federal troops progressed toward a union of

their attacking columns. Tyler had already spoken to McDowell, and the two forces were drawing nearer and nearer together. Victory appeared so certain that nothing but a junction of the two columns was wanting to a glorious result, and this now seemed inevitable.

The clamor of the artillery was checked for a little time on both sides. Red-handed death cannot rush panting on the track forever. Black-mouthed guns will get too foul for belching fire, and the swarthy men who feed them must have breathing time. As the fight flagged, and the men paused to draw breath, their terrible suffering was apparent in the parched lips that had tasted water but once through all that hot day, and the bloodshot eyes with which each man seemed to beseech his comrade for drink which no one had to give. Still, with dry lips and throats full of dust, they talked over a thousand details of valor performed on the field. They spoke sadly of the loss of brave Cameron, the wounding.of Hunter, the fall of Haggerty and Slocum, the doubtful fate of noble young Wilcox. They discussed the impetuous dash and resolute stand of the Irishmen, the murderous shock sustained by the Rhode Island regiments, how the Highlanders had done justice to their own warlike traditions, and the Connecticut Third had crowned its State with honors. They told how Heintzelman had stooped down from his war-horse to have his wounded wrist bound up, refusing to dismount-of the intrepid Burnside, and of Sprague, the patriotic young Governor, who led on the forces his generosity had raised, to one victorious charge after another, till with his own hands he spiked the Rhode Island guns when compelled to leave them to the enemy.

So tranquil was the field during this short period of rest, that the soldiers who had foreborne to throw their rations away in the march, unslung their haversacks and sat down upon the grass to share the contents with their less prudent companions; those who had been fortunate enough to pick up the enemy's haversacks, cast off in retreat, added their contents to the scanty store.

While a few thus snatched a mouthful of food, others climbed up the tall trees and took a triumphant view of the vast battle-field their valor had conquered. The scene of carnage which it presented was awful. Dead and dying men heaped together on the red earth, crippled horses struggling desperately in their death-throes, wounded men lying helplessly on the grass to which they had been dragged from under the hoofs of the war-chargers-all this grouped where the angry waves of battle had rolled down the beautiful valley, with its back-ground of mountains, looking immovable and grandly tranquil against the sky, was a picture which no man who saw it will ever forget.

The army, far advanced within the enemy's defensive lines, believ

ing itself victorious, was thus falling into quiet. The great struggle of the contending forces, each to outflank the other, had ceased. The prestige of success belonged to the Union, whose stars and stripes shone out triumphantly as the smoke which had engulfed the combatants rolled away.

All at once those in the tree-tops saw a commotion in the far distance. Columns of troops were moving toward them with flashing bayonets, and Southern banners, unfurling the stars and bars to the sun. On they came-rank after rank, column after column, one continuous stream of armed men, pouring down upon the battle-field with bursts of music and wild shouts of enthusiasm.

It was Johnston's reinforcements, marching up from the railroad. On they rushed, fresh, vigorous, and burning with ardor, through masses of wounded soldiers that lay by the road. The infa try broke from the double-quick to a swift run-the cavalry rode in on a sharp gallop the artillery wagons were encircled with men eager to get their ordnance in place against the thrice-exhausted Union troops. In a continuous stream these columns swarmed into the woods, the greater force centering around the hill about which the storm of battle had raged fiercest.

In an instant the whole battle commenced again. The officers sprang to their guns, anxious but not appalled. The men fell into rank ready for a new onset, tired as they were.

Then it was that Griffin's battery changed position, and the Fire Zouaves coming up under a terrible fire, broke and scattered down the hill-side, but rallied again in broken masses to rescue Rickett's battery, dragging the guns off with their own hands from amid the pile of dying horses that lay around them. Then it was that the Sixty-ninth and Seventy-ninth New York swept through the meadows from the north across the road, and charged up the hill with such daring courage, resisting the shock of battle fifteen minutes, and breaking only when mortal valor could withstand the storm of bullets no longer.

Then the bold Connecticut regiments charged up the hill. Thousands of the impetuous enemy fell upon them, but, in spite of all they planted the star-spangled banner and sent its folds sweeping out from the crest of the hill. Not till this was done, and a long last shout sent ringing after the banner, were these heroic regiments driven from their position. But beaten back at last, they retired step by step, fighting as they went.

Then the Zouaves broke into the fight once more, scattered on the ground, some prostrate on their faces, others with limbs huddled together as if dead-while many stood with their eyes to the sun, waiting the onset of the Black Horse cavalry that came galloping upon

them from the woods. A few of these eccentric warriors were making a feint of defending themselves while the cavalry stood hesitating on the margin of the wood, but the rest seemed to have been cut down. by the sweep of some deadly cannonade, and lay in the grass like a flock of partridge shot down in full flight.

Out from the woody cover the Black Hawks thundered on, their arms flashing and the jetty necks of their horses flinging off the sunshine. The handful of Zouaves now flocked together in front of their prostrate comrades, seeming doubtful whether to fight or flee. On the black chargers came, champing the bit and tossing their heads angrily, the riders ready to trample the scattered Zouaves under hoof, as too easy a conquest for their flashing swords. A sudden, sharp ringing yell, and the dead Zouaves sprang to life, confronting the horsemen in a wall of bristling steel. A sharp volley-the horses reared, plunged, and ran back upon each other, some falling dead with quivering limbs as the fatal bullets rent their vitals, and gushes of blood crimsoned their coal-black chests; others staggering from a dozen wounds, rushed madly through the broken ranks of the terrified cavalry.

Before the chargers could again be brought into line, the Zouaves flung away their rifles, and sprang like tigers upon them. Seizing them by the bit, they wound themselves up over their arched necks-a flash of bowie-knives gleamed like chain-lightning across the ranks, and many a wild black horse plunged on riderless with burning eyes, streaming mane, and ringing empty stirrups, headlong through the already half-disorganized ranks, and scouring over the battle-field, scattering dismay as they went.

A last struggle now ensued, with desperate men and broken forcesthen a retreat, so wild, so impetuous and reckless, that all organization was given up. Regiments lost their officers, broke, mingled into others, and rushed across the field a headlong torrent, which no human power could arrest. On they went, plunging through the sea of carnage that surrounded the hill-the surging, angry broken waves of a brave army hurrying tumultuously from what had been a victorious field but an hour before.

Down from the hills, broken into frightened masses, pallid, reeling with exhaustion, they swept onward like a whirlwind, bearing the protesting officers with them, or trampling them under foot; for human life was nothing to them in that hot, mad race. The contagion of retreat spread like a prairie fire, from one point of the battle-field to another, scattering the army in wild confusion.

Still it was not quite a panic; two regiments, the Seventy-first New York and Second Rhode Island, kept their ranks in all this confusion, and were led in order from the field, over the road they had passed in