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toward the woods straddling the road, he was stopped by a fierce countercharge from Ashby. The regiment’s colors, sixty-four Cavaliers, and Sir Percy himself were captured. Sir Percy was furious with the behavior of his troops, whom he felt had barely put up a fight.48 “He would have stopped right there in the road and engaged in fisticuffs if he could have found a partner,” wrote a Confederate soldier.49

Sir Percy was still seething with rage when he arrived as a prisoner at the Confederate base, where an old comrade from the Garibaldi campaign, Roberdeau Wheat, immediately recognized his voice. According to Dick Taylor, Wheat shouted, “Percy, old boy!” “Why, Bob!” the other rejoined. Wheat good-naturedly chided him for fighting on the “wrong” side, and then stepped aside so that the colonel could be brought before Stonewall Jackson.50 That evening, while the two men were chatting in Jackson’s office, news came that Turner Ashby had been shot through the heart during a later skirmish. A member of Jackson’s staff quickly led Sir Percy away so that the general could be alone.51

By sunset on June 9, the bulk of the Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley were in full retreat. A newspaper in Richmond declared: “Strange as it may appear, news from the armies within five miles of [this city] is of secondary importance. Invariably the crowds which daily flock around the bulletin boards ask first ‘What news of Jackson?’ ”52 With only 17,000 troops at his disposal, Jackson had succeeded against a combined Union force three times his strength, attacking it piecemeal, making full use of the valley’s terrain. Yet the events taking place around Richmond were just as significant; on May 31, Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston had launched an attack against McClellan’s army. Known as the Battle of Fair Oaks, or Seven Pines, the campaign failed in all its objectives, but it did produce one stroke of luck for the Confederacy: the obstinate and ineffectual General Joe Johnston was struck by a bullet. President Davis replaced him with General Robert E. Lee, who had never before commanded troops in battle. He will “be timid and irresolute in action,” sneered General McClellan when informed of Lee’s appointment.53

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Spring flooding postponed further movement by either army; and the lull had all Washington on tenterhooks. The five miles between McClellan and the city of Richmond seemed a mere hop and a skip to victory. Seward boasted to Charles Sumner that the war would be over in ninety days or less. Lord Lyons could not help wondering whether he was about to miss its most exciting moment. He had at last received permission to take a holiday and was leaving on June 18. Life in Washington was no “bed of roses,” he had often told his sister. But it was not until May that he had finally summoned up the nerve to ask Lord Russell for a leave of absence.54 Lyons had grown despondent waiting for an answer; “my chance of getting home seems less and less as I reflect upon it,” he wrote to his sister.55 By the beginning of June, he had persuaded himself that his case was hopeless. Then, on the sixth, came Lord Russell’s letter granting him three months’ leave.56

Lord Lyons’s final week in Washington started out well with only the usual routine work.57 This satisfactory state of affairs was ruined, however, by the arrival of Lord Edward St. Maur, a younger son of the Duke of Somerset, First Lord of the Admiralty. It was Lord Edward’s older brother, Lord St. Maur, who had briefly fought as a Red Shirt under Garibaldi. Lord Lyons thought that Lord Edward was risking his career in the Foreign Service for a cheap thrill and warned him that the presence of a British cabinet minister’s son could lead to all kinds of unexpected trouble. But even he had not anticipated Lord Edward’s falling into the hands of Consul Bernal in Baltimore and his secessionist cronies. The Southern journalist W. W. Glenn remembered his first meeting with Lord Edward St. Maur very well. “He was quite young,” he wrote, “and had a great dread of having his name in the newspapers