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The trek took more than two weeks and cost De Courcy many of his horses and all his supply wagons, which either broke or became lodged in the rocks. The brigades were weary and hungry when they reunited on the other side of the Gap on June 18. The next day, they discovered that the terrible odyssey had been for nothing. The Confederates, believing that General Morgan possessed a force of more than fifty thousand, had abandoned the Gap.40 Nevertheless, Morgan became emotional when he reflected on the hardships endured by De Courcy’s troops. “Pardon me for speaking of the heroic bearing and fortitude of the Seventh Division,” he wrote to General Buell and Secretary Stanton. “A nobler band never marched beneath a conquering flag.” He singled out De Courcy in particular and asked that he be promoted to brigadier general. “He is an accomplished officer and is every inch a soldier.” His request was ignored.

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McClellan’s peninsula campaign to capture Richmond was already under way by June 20, although not in the manner expected by the War Department. McClellan was laying elaborate sieges to Yorktown (where a British army had surrendered in 1781) and Williamsburg, towns that the three British military observers with him believed could have been taken with a bit of dash and very little fuss. They held their tongues, though, and whenever anyone asked them for their opinion they confined themselves to praising the general’s wonderful job in transforming civilians into soldiers. This was exactly what Lord Palmerston wanted. He later reminded Lord Russell that all officers observing “federal forces in the field … should be Strictly cautioned not to make any Criticisms which might be useful to the Federals in pointing out to them Faults or Imperfections.… The Federals are luckily too vain to attach much value to the opinions of Englishmen, but our officers might be told to open their Eyes and Ears and to keep their mouths Shut.”11.2 41

A combination of poor intelligence gathering and McClellan’s own paranoia had led him to believe that he was heavily outnumbered by the Confederates defending Richmond. His demands for reinforcements brought about the deployment of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, known as the Cavaliers, which had been left behind to guard Washington. The morale of the regiment had improved since the arrival of Sir Percy Wyndham, a twenty-nine-year-old English soldier of fortune, on February 19, who had been assigned as its colonel by the War Department in an attempt to resolve the regiment’s officer problems. Few men would willingly have accepted such an unhappy outfit, but Sir Percy was not the reflective kind. In the words of one officer, “he strode along with the nonchalant air of one who had wooed Dame Fortune too long to be cast down by her frowns.”42

The regiment found Sir Percy’s eccentricities rather endearing. Dark hair crowned his head in a Byronic wave, and a mustache and beard extended from his lips like bushy Christmas trees. He seemed to love dressing up and would change his uniform on the flimsiest of excuses. He looked younger than his years even though he had been a soldier since the age of fifteen and had served in the French, Austrian, and British armies. Wyndham’s parentage was dubious and his knighthood Italian (bestowed upon him by King Victor Emmanuel for his services during Garibaldi’s campaign), but his skills and bravery were authentic.43 Although he dressed like a dandy, he possessed a temper that terrified the men. When enraged—which was apparent by the way he twiddled his mustache—Sir Percy was capable of anything, so much so that officers from other regiments insisted on wearing sidearms when around him. The men learned how to drill because if one person made a mistake, he would force the entire regiment to keep repeating the maneuver until they dropped from fatigue. But instead of hating him, the soldiers felt an extraordinary sense of pride. “Under our new Colonel our affairs have improved so much that we consider ourselves equal to almost any Cavalry Regiment in the