Gods and Generals - Jeff Shaara [170]
From back behind the heavy trees a new force was advancing into the confused positions of Meade’s men. It was Early’s division, and they flowed into the woods, strong, heavy lines of fresh troops. Now the muskets began again, and Jackson felt it, felt the surge. Yes, push them back. Close in front of him he heard new sounds, of the wounded and dying, and of blind panic, and the sounds began to shift back toward the road. Meade’s men were falling back.
EARLY’S DIVISION pushed the Federal advance completely back out of the trees, and then the Confederate position was strengthened, units moved out into the frozen swamp. The gap was sealed, the reserves brought forward, and the Federal forces wilted under the steady barrage of cannon and muskets. Alongside Meade, Gibbon’s division, which had pushed up against the brunt of Jackson’s defense, could only hold its ground in front of the line of trees, and now was pulling back as well. It had not been pressed as hard, but Gibbon had expected help, support from the vast number of troops behind him.
For most of the morning the rest of Franklin’s Grand Division, the rest of the sixty thousand men who had crossed the river, stood in formation, ready to follow Meade across the plain, into the woods. The plan had been for Meade to push through and break the lines, but when he tumbled back out of the woods, flowing back out into the plain with broken lines and panicked troops, Franklin watched without responding, and did not order a new advance. The call went instead across the river, to Burnside, a request for new instructions, and from high up on Stafford Heights, from the man who still believed in his own plan, no orders came. If Franklin’s troops could not carry the day, could not push through Jackson’s woods, then it would be Sumner and the troops in the town.
Outside Burnside’s headquarters, while Franklin’s courier waited for instructions, the commander stared through his glasses toward the hills beyond the town, where Sumner’s troops would make the final push, a glorious assault that Burnside knew would sweep Lee’s army from the hills in one broad stroke.
35. HANCOCK
December 13, 1862. Midday.
THEY MOVED through the streets, began to form on the edge of town, out past the last of the houses. They could still hear the guns down to the left, the destruction of Meade’s division, but their attention was focused on the hill a half-mile across the open ground in front of them.
Hancock rode through the forming lines, stared out at the field, could see fences, rows of posts and rails that would slow and therefore devastate his lines when crossed. Farther, he could now clearly make out the canal, crossing the field at a slight angle, the canal that Burnside said did not exist.
Out beyond his lines the division of William French was already in battle formation, would be the first across the field. Behind him, still strung out down the streets of the town, Oliver Howard’s division would follow Hancock. This was Couch’s Second Corps, and on them would fall the responsibility for salvaging Burnside’s great plan.
Hancock rode back into the town, saw the last units of his men gathering, easing slowly through the last rows of buildings. Officers were prodding the slow movers, and when they saw him, their pace quickened. He rode toward the river, glanced up at the heights beyond, to the Federal headquarters, to the silent guns. He lowered his head, thought of the irony. The great force of artillery that