Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
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Jackson, “And tell him we’ll hang him real gentle now!”
“Steady now!” Starbuck called to his men. He kept his back to the enemy, concentrating on his company. “Back to the trees! Steady, don’t run!” No one else from the Brigade was in sight. Swynyard or Faulconer must have taken the whole Brigade back into the woods, abandoning Starbuck and Medlicott to the enemy. But why had Bird not protested? A shell landed just behind Starbuck, buffeting him with its hot punch of air. He turned and saw the Yankee skirmishers running toward him. “Double back to the woods!” he shouted, so releasing his men from their slow, steady withdrawal. “Muster them by the road, Sergeant!” he called to Truslow.
More Northern jeers and a handful of bullets followed the skirmishers’ hurried retreat. The Yankees were in high spirits. They had waited a long time to give Stonewall Jackson a whipping, and now they were laying the lash on thick and hard. Back among the trees beside the turnpike Starbuck’s men panted as they crouched and looked nervously at their officer, who, in turn, was watching the shadows lengthen across the wheat field. He was also watching the far tree line, where still more guns and infantry had appeared. The Yankees were triumphant and the rebels beaten. “If we stay here”—Medlicott had joined Starbuck again—“we’ll like as not be prisoners.”
“Swynyard put you in command,” Starbuck said pointedly.
Medlicott hesitated, unhappy to take responsibility, then diffidently suggested that the two companies should retreat further through the trees. To the east of the turnpike a furious artillery battle was deafening the evening air. Smoke poured off the hillside where rebel guns were emplaced, but those cannon were of no use to the beaten men west of the turnpike, where the Yankee line had crushed the standing corn to drive Jackson’s infantry back into the timber on the valley’s southern crest. The Northern guns had the range of those trees now, and the green summer woods were filled with the whistling menace of shrapnel. Starbuck wondered where the Georgia regiment had gone and where the rest of the Brigade was hidden.
“I can’t see the Brigade!” Medlicott said despairingly. A salvo of shells cracked ahead of the skirmishers, filling the trees with whistling shards of hot metal. The men leading the retreat had followed the twisting path into a small hollow, and now they instinctively crouched rather than leave their scanty cover to walk into that zone of fire. The perplexed and frightened Captain Medlicott seemed content to let them rest. “Maybe we should send a patrol to look for the Brigade?” he suggested to Starbuck.
“While the rest of us wait here to be captured?” Starbuck asked sarcastically.
“I don’t know,” Medlicott said. The miller was suddenly bereft of confidence and initiative. His doughy face looked hurt, like that of a child struck for an offense it had not committed.
“Yankees!” Truslow called warningly, pointing west to where blue uniforms had appeared in the woods.
“Stay still!” Medlicott shouted in sudden panic. “Get down!”
Starbuck would have gone on retreating, hoping to join up with the rebel reserve, but Medlicott had been panicked into making a decision, and the men crouched gratefully in the shadows. Two of Starbuck’s company lowered a body they had been carrying. “Shall we bury him?” one of the two men asked Starbuck.
“Who is it?” It was dark under the trees, and the evening was drawing in.
“Tom Petty.”
“Oh, dear God,” Starbuck said. He had seen Petty wounded but had thought he would live, and surely Petty had deserved to live, for he had been a boy, not a man. He had used to shave each morning, but the blade had made no difference to his cheeks. He had only used the razor to explain his lack of beard, but he had been a good soldier, cheerful and willing. Starbuck had planned to make him up to corporal, but now it would have to be Mellors, who was not nearly so quick on the uptake. “Scratch him a grave,” he said, “and get Corporal Waggoner to say a prayer for him.”
All around them the shouts of the Yankees grew louder. The woodland was filled with screaming shells, so many that at times the torn leaves looked like a green snow drifting through the warm evening air. The trees echoed with the pathetic cries of dying men. Lieutenant Coffman hunkered down beside Starbuck, his small face showing bewilderment because his beloved Southerners were being whipped, because the North was winning, and because nothing in his world made sense.
The Reverend Elial Starbuck shared in the joy as the realization of victory dawned on the Yankee headquarters. And what a victory it was proving! Prisoners had confirmed that the enemy commander was indeed the notorious Stonewall Jackson. “The wretch won’t be fetching his supper from my supply wagons tonight!” General Banks exulted. It was true that the enemy was still holding firm on the slopes of Cedar Mountain, but Banks’s staff brought message after message that told how the Federal right wing under General Crawford was driving the rebels clean across the valley and into the woods beyond. “Now we’ll turn their flank!” Banks exclaimed, gesturing extravagantly to show how he meant to hook the right wing of his army around the backside of Cedar Mountain and thus surround the remnants of the Confederate army. “Maybe we’ll have Jackson as our supper guest tonight!”
“I doubt he’ll have much appetite after this drubbing,” an artillery major observed.
“Fellow’s reputed to eat damned strangely anyway,” an aide responded, then blushed for having sworn in front of the Reverend Starbuck. “Nothing but stale bread and chopped cabbage, I hear.”
“You and I could chop the rogue some cabbage, eh, Starbuck?” General Banks thus drew his distinguished guest into the jubilant conversation.
“I would make him eat what the slaves eat!” the Reverend Starbuck said.
“I think he eats worse than any slave!” Banks jested. “Force a slave to eat what Jackson dines on and the whole world would revile our inhumanity. Maybe we should punish the man by giving him a proper meal? Oysters and pheasant, you think?”
Banks’s aides laughed, and their master turned his gaze back to the battle smoke that was already touched with a faint pink tinge of evening sunlight. In the slanting light Banks looked quite superb: straight-backed, stern-faced, the very image of a soldier, and suddenly, after months of disappointment, the politician did at last feel like a soldier. He had, Banks modestly admitted to himself, grown into the job and was now ready for the battles to come. For despite this day’s splendid victory, there would be more battles. With Stonewall Jackson defeated, General Robert Lee, who was protecting Richmond from McClellan’s army, would be forced north even if such a move did open the rebel capital to McClellan’s forces. McClellan would dutifully overwhelm the Richmond defenses, Pope would crush Lee, and then, bar some mopping up on the Mississippi and skull-breaking in the deep South, the war would be over. Better, it would be won. All that remained was a few battles, a rebel surrender, a Federal victory parade, and most important of all, the absolute necessity for President Lincoln and the dunderheads in the United States Congress to realize that it had been Nathaniel Prentiss Banks who had precipitated the whole process. My God, Banks thought, but others would try to steal his glory now! John Pope would doubtless make the attempt, and George McClellan would certainly write to every newspaper editor in creation, which made it all the more important for this night’s victory dispatch to be written firmly and clearly. Tonight’s dispatch, Banks knew, would fashion history books for years to come, but more important, the words he wrote tonight would garner votes for the remainder of his career.
Federal officers gathered round to offer the General their congratulations. The commander of Banks’s bodyguard, a tall Pennsylvanian Zouave, handed the General a silver stirrup cup of brandy. “A toast to your triumph, sir,” the Zouave proclaimed. A ragged line of disconsolate prisoners trudged past the group of horsemen. One or two of the captured seceshers glanced sullenly at the Northern General, and one rogue spat in his direction, but tonight, Banks thought, he would have the most valuable prisoner as his dinner guest. He would treat General Jackson with courtesy, as a gallant soldier should, and the world would wonder at the victor’s modesty. Then Banks imagined himself at another dinner table, a much grander table in Washington that