was no time to correct the error. The regiment, which would have fought
well under proper circumstances, from the start lost confidence in its
officers and itself. Still it held its ground until it had burned
almost twenty rounds, and until the Confederate line was within fifty
yards in its face, and had quite outflanked it. Then the raking volleys
of such a front as Jackson was wont to present, and, more than all,
the fire of Buschbeck's brigade in its immediate rear, broke it; and it
melted away, leaving only a platoon's strength around the colors,
to continue for a brief space the struggle behind the Buschbeck line,
while the rest fled down the road, or through the woods away from the
deadly fire. This regiment lost its entire color-guard, and nearly
one-half of its complement killed or wounded.

There is much discrepancy as to the time during which the Eleventh Corps
made resistance to Jackson's advance. All reliable authorities put the
time of the attack as six P.M. When the last gun was fired at the
Buschbeck rifle-pits, it was dusk, at that season about quarter past
seven. It seems reasonably settled, therefore, that the corps retarded
the Confederate advance over about a mile of ground for exceeding an
hour. How much more can be expected of ten thousand raw troops
telescoped by twenty-five thousand veterans?

Rodes, now quite mixed with Colston's line, still pressed on, and
between Hooker's headquarters and his elated foe there was scarce an
organized regiment. Hooker's fatal inability to grasp the situation,
and his ordering an advance of all troops on Howard's left as far as the
Second Corps, had made him almost defenceless. The troops which should
have been available to stem this adverse tide were blindly groping in
the woods, two miles in front,--in pursuit of Jackson.