by a difficult march through the mountain, Pegram's left and rear, while McClellan attacked in front with five thousand men, and a number of pieces of artillery. On the 11th of July, before daybreak, Rosecrans' column was in motion. The path up the mountain was rugged and perplexed beyond all expectation; the weather was uncertain; often heavy showers of rain poured down for hours, and when the clouds broke, the sun appeared and filled the air with heat. Through the laurel thickets, clambering up ravines, slipping from stones dislodged and earth moistened by the rain, the Federals toiled up the rountain. As they advanced through the forest, the Confederate artillery posted on the top of the mountain, opened upon them, but with little effect, as their lines were concealed by the trees and brushwood. After some sharp skirmishing, Rosecrans threw out his men on either flank, with the view of surrounding the small Confederate force. Finding himself with three thousand of the enemy in his rear, and five thousand in his front, Col. Pegram endeavored to escape with his command after a small loss in action. Six companies of infantry succeeded in escaping; the other part of the command was surrendered as prisoners of war.

As soon as Gen. Garnett heard of the result of the engagement at Rich Mountain, he determined to evacuate Laurel Hill, and retire to Huttonsville by the way of Beverley. But this plan was disconcerted by a failure to block the road from Rich Mountain to Beverley; and Gen. Garnett was compelled to retreat by a mountain road into Hardy County. The retreat was a painful one, and attended with great suffering; the pursuing enemy fell upon the rear of the distressed little army at every opportunity; and at one of the fords on Little Cheat River four companies of a Georgia regiment were cut off, and Gen. Garnett himself was killed by one of the enemy's sharpshooters.

The results of the engagements on the mountain and of the pursuit of the retreating army was not very considerable in killed and woundedprobably not a hundred on the side of the Confederates. But they had lost nearly all of their artillery, more than a thousand prisoners, and almost the entire baggage of the command, portions of which had been used in blocking the road against the enemy's artillery.

But this early disaster to the Confederate cause was soon to be more than retrieved on a broader and more interesting theatre, and by one of the most decisive and dramatic victories of the war; and to the direction of these important operations our narrative now takes us in the regular succession of events.

On the 18th of July, a despatch reached Gen. Johnston at Winchester, that the great Northern army was advancing on Manassas. He was immediately ordered to form a junction of his army with that of Beauregard, should the movement in his judgment be deemed advisable.

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The "Grand Army," as the Northern newspapers entitled it, was at last ready to move, and only after a period of impatience on the part of the Northern people, that was clamorous and insolent with the assurance of victory. "On to Richmond" had been the cry of Northern newspapers for weeks; extreme parties in the Federal Congress urged an immediate advance; and it was thought to be so easy an enterprise to press forward and plant the stars and stripes in the Capitol Square of Richmond, that men wondered why Gen. Scott, who directed the military movements from Washington, did not at once grasp the prize within his reach, complete his reputation, and despatch the war. At last it was given out in Washington that the Grand Army was ready to move; and that Richmond would be occupied probably in ten days. It was an occasion of peculiar hilarity, and the prospect of a triumphal entry of the Federal arms into Richmond was entertained with every variety of public joy. Politicians prepared carriage-loads of champagne for festal celebration of the victory that was to be won; tickets were printed and distributed for a grand ball in Richmond; a stream of visitors to the battle-field set out from Washington, thronged with gay women and strumpets going to attend "the Manassas Races;" and soon in the rear of McDowell's army was collected an indecent and bedizened rabble to watch the battle from afar. Such an exhibition of morbid curiosity or of exultant hate has seldom been witnessed in the history of the civilized world.

THE BATTLE OF MANASSAS.

The great contest of arms was to be preceded by an affair which, however intended, proved of some importance. On the 18th of July, the enemy made a demonstration with artillery in front of Gen. Bonham's brigade, which held the approaches to Mitchell's Ford. Meanwhile, he was advancing in strong columns of infantry, with artillery and cavalry on Blackburn's Ford, which was covered by Gen. Longstreet's brigade. Before advancing his infantry, the enemy maintained a fire of rifle artillery for half an hour; then he pushed forward a column of over three thousand infantry to the assault. Twice the enemy was foiled and driven back by the Confederate skirmishers and Longstreet's reserve companies. As he returned to the contest, Longstreet, who commanded only twelve hundred bayonets, had been reinforced with two regiments of infantry and two pieces of artillery. Unable to effect a passage of the stream, the enemy's fire of musketry was soon silenced, and the affair became one of artillery. Gradually his fire slackened, and his forces were drawn off in evident confusion. Sixty of his dead were found on the field. The Confederate casualties were unimportant-fifteen killed and fifty-three wounded.

Whatever the significance of this affair-whether or not it was intended as a mere "reconnoissance in force," according to the enemy's account-it was considered as a prelude to an important battle, and, in the artillery duel, which it had brought on, had given the Con federates great confidence in this unexpectedly brilliant arm of their service. Two days passed without any military event. But on the night of the 20th of July it was evident that the enemy was in motion. As the lights around Centreville seemed to die out about midnight, low murmuring noises reached the Confederate out-posts, as if large bodies of men were marching towards the Stone Bridge, where the extreme left of Beauregard's army rested. The bumping of heavy wagons and artillery was distinctly audible, and words of command could be faintly heard in the still night.

The sun of the 21st of July rose with more than usual splendour. It was a calm Sabbath morning. The measured sounds of artillery told that both armies were on the alert. Smoke curling away from the cannon's mouth rose slowly into the air; glistening masses of troops could be seen on the distant landscape, and far away in the west rose the dark outline of the Blue Ridge, which enclosed, as an amphitheatre, the woods and hollows, the streams and open spaces of Manassas Plain.

The night before the battle Gen. Beauregard had decided to take the offensive. Gen. Johnston had arrived during the day, but only with a portion of the Army of the Shenandoah; five thousand of his men having been detained on the railroad for want of transportation. It was determined that the two forces, less than thirty thousand effective men of all arms, should be united within the lines of Bull Run, and thence advance to the attack of the enemy, before Patterson's junction with McDowell, which was daily expected. But a battle was to ensue, different in place and circumstances from any previous plan on the Confederate side.

The Confederate army was divided into eight brigades, stretching for eight or ten miles along the defensive line of Bull Run. The right of the line was much stronger than the left, in position and numbers; the extreme left at Stone Bridge being held by Colonel Evans with only a regiment and battalion. It had been arranged by McDowell, the Federal commander, that the first division of his army, commanded by Gen. Tyler, should take position at Stone Bridge, and feign an attack upon that point, while the second and third divisions were, by routes unobserved by the Confederates, to cross the run, and thus effect a junction of three formidable divisions of the grand army, to be thrown upon a force scattered along the stream for eight miles, and so situated as to render a concerted movement on their part impracticable.

A little after sunrise the enemy opened a light cannonade upon Col

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Evans' position at Stone Bridge. This continued for an hour, while the main body of the enemy was marching to cross Bull Run, some two miles above the Confederate left. Discovering, to his amazement, that the enemy had crossed the stream above him, Col. Evans fell back. As the masses of the enemy drew near, military science pronounced the day lost for the Confederates. They had been flanked by numbers appar ently overwhelming. That usually fatal and terrible word in military parlance "flanked"--may be repeated with emphasis.

It is true that Col. Evans, who had held the position at Stone Bridge, where the enemy's feint was made, had discovered the nature of that demonstration in time to form a new line of battle, as the main body of the enemy emerged from the "Big Forest," where it had worked its way along the tortuous, narrow track of a rarely-used road. But the column that crossed Bull Run numbered over sixteen thousand men of all arms. Col. Evans had eleven companies and two field-pieces. Gen. Bee, with some Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi troops, moved up to his support. The joint force was now about five regiments and six fieldpieces. That thin line was all that stood between sixteen thousand Federals and victory. It is wonderful that this small force of Confederates should have, for the space of an hour, breasted the unremitting battlestorin, and maintained for that time odds almost incredible. But they did it. It was frequently said afterwards by military men in Richmond, that the Confederates had been whipped, but that the men, in the novelty of their experience of a battle-field, "did not know it."

But at last the blended commands of Bee and Evans gave way before the surging masses of the enemy. The order for retreat was given by General Bee. The Confederates fell back sullenly. Their ranks were fast losing cohesion; but there was no disorder; and, at every step of their retreat, they stayed, by their hard skirmishing, the flanking columns of the enemy. There were more than five-fold odds against them. The enemy now caught the idea that he had won the day; the news of a victory was carried to the rear; the telegraph flashed it to all the cities in the North, and before noon threw Washington into exultations.

General Bee had a soldier's eye and recognition of the situation. The conviction shot through his heart that the day was lost. As he was pressed back in rear of the Robinson House, he found Gen. Jackson's brigade of five regiments ready to support him. It was the timely arrival of a man who, since that day, never failed to be on the front of a battle's crisis, and to seize the decisive moments that make victories. Gen. Bee rushed to the strange figure of the Virginia commander, who sat his horse like marble, only twisting his head in a high black stock, as he gave his orders with stern distinctness. "Gen“Then, eral," he pathetically exclaimed, "they are beating us back."

sir," replied Jackson, "we'll give them the bayonet." The words were as a new inspiration. Gen. Bee turned to his over-tasked troops, exclaiming, "There are Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone-wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer."

In the meantime, where were the Confederate Generals-Beauregard and Johnston? They were four miles away. Gen. Beauregard had become involved in a series of blunders and mishaps, such as had been seldom crowded into a single battle-field. In ignorance of the enemy's plan of atttack, he had kept his army posted along Bull Run for more than eight miles, waiting for his wily adversary to develop his purpose to him. He had, at an early hour of the morning, determined to attack with his right wing and centre on the enemy's flank and rear at Centreville, with precautions against the advance of his reserves from the direc tion of Washington. Even after his left flank had been so terribly engaged, he supposed that this movement would relieve it; and in his official report of the action, he writes: "by such a movement, I confidently expected to achieve a complete victory for my country by 12 o'clock, M."

It was half-past ten in the morning, when Gen. Beauregard learned that his orders for an advance on Centreville had miscarried. He and Gen. Johnston had taken position on a commanding hill, about half a mile in the rear of Mitchell's Ford, to watch the movements of the enemy. While they were anxiously listening there for sounds of conflict from the Confederate front at Centreville, the battle was bursting and expending its fury upon their left flank. From the hill could be witnessed the grand diorama of the conflict. The roar of artillery reached there like protracted thunder. The whole valley was a boiling crater of dust and smoke. The enemy's design could be no longer in doubt; the violent firing on the left showed, at last, where the crisis of the battle was; and now immense clouds of dust plainly denoted the march of a large body of troops from the Federal centre.

Not a moment was now to be lost. It was instantly necessary to make new combinations, and these the most rapid, to meet the enemy on the field upon which he had chosen to give battle. It was evident that the left flank of the Confederates was being overpowered. Dashing on at a headlong gallop, Gens. Beauregard and Johnston reached the field of action, in the rear of the Robinson House, just as the commands of Bee and Evans had taken shelter in a wooded ravine, and Jackson's brigade had moved up to their left, to withstand the pressure of the enemy's attack. It was a thrilling moment. Gen. Johnston seized the colours of the 4th Alabama regiment, and offered to lead the attack. Gen. Beauregard leaped from his horse, and turning his face to his troops, exclaimed: "I have come here to die with you."