Belmont Chronicle

Graphic Rebel Account of Early's Stampede—The Loss In Artillery Admitted to have been Fifty-seven Pieces.

Correspondence of the Richmond Enquirer.

New Market, Oct. 21.
Little I thought, ten days ago, when I was writing about our cavalry from this identical place, to which I am now just returned, that one of the greatest, if not the greatest stampede of this war, and a stampede of infantry, too, had yet to take place. It is the most singular affair that one can possibly imagine; a whole day of glory and a few minutes of shame—a splendid beginning and a monstrous end. We swept pickets, hillsides and breastworks, and formed our lines within the breastworks and camps, with seven pieces of artillery taken before they could fire three rounds, and a running foe before us. This clean sweep was made by Kershaw's division; and that is the way we began our work. The enemy tries to rally on the left, but it is in vain; we push on, and now we hear the firing of other divisions on the right, which come in for their share of it, and gallantly, too.
Over hills, stone fences, across broad, cleared fields and thick woods the fighting goes on as regular, as steady, as if it had just begun, and still it is just now 3 o'clock; we have driven the enemy four miles, captured all the camps, with everything in them, spotted the ground with their dead and wounded, sent to the rear some 1,800 prisoners, captured 18 pieces of artillery, but the fighting still goes on, although we have stopped driving the enemy, who is by this time pushed back further than Middletown on a line extending from the left of it.
All this is very well, but pending this time another work goes on that is far, very far, from being quite as good. The number of our men plundering in the camps increases every hour. The provost guard carries off a batch of them to the front, but a larger number comes out from the ground, which they soon cover like one of the seven plagues of Egypt—the locusts I should say. All these men are so confident that the enemy is whipped that they only want to secure their share of the booty. But, alas! war is a game that two can play. The Yankees bring up a new line at about one hour and a quarter before sundown. They push it to the front and our left division (Gordon's) gives way. They give way, yea, but that is nothing, God bless them. The best of men must give way sometimes; but why don't they rally? I say why don't they rally, for this is our only trouble and misfortune on that ill fated 19th of October.—But rally they won't. See them go back unconcerned, just as quietly as if nothing was the matter. They do not reply anything to officers; they just slip back with their muskets poised in their hands as if they were deploying backward as skirmishers. In the meanwhile the Yankees lose no time: it is now their turn to go onward.
Kershaw's division now was struck; it gives way, too, in its turn, after having tried hard to stand its ground. Nothing better, nothing more noble, as long as it did fight; but now it has given way like Gordon's and, like Gordon's, it won't rally. Our artillery, in general, did well. They tried to re-establish the fight, and twice made a stand—at such points, too, where they might have had the vantage ground over the Yankees; but there was no rally—no rally of a brigade, no rally of a regiment, no rally of a company; the whole army confused into a nameless, shapeless mass of men, going back, back, all the time. The flood increases in depth as we reach the turnpike. The artillery, the ambulances, wagons, all rattle down, at first at a decent rate, at a cool walk, a kind of gentlemanly stampede; but a few shells that come bursting right over our heads give us an additional speed. We are running; a turn of the road, a protection from the shells, and we walk again. I never saw or dreamed of a more self-possessed crowd of skedaddlers: they were no more scared, sir, and no more ashamed, than if there had not been a particle of danger or disgrace in their predicament. Finally, an old rotten bridge gives way, there is a dead lock, and artillery, wagons and ambulances are there for the Yankees. They need not strike a lick to have them—all they have to do is to come down the road where they are stuck, and theirs they are. In that way we lost thirty-nine of our own pieces, besides eighteen that we captured, and God knows how many wagons and ambulances. All those trains might have been saved by a force of two hundred skirmishers, but it could not be got. They were tired; they were played out; they had enough of it—our men!
It is impossible, at present, to give you a fair estimate of our losses in men. Speaking in general, the loss is as small as it can be for a fight from sunrise to sunset, although I know one regiment of our division to have lost twenty officers. We took a large number of prisoners and secured them, whilst we must have lost very few, as we did stampede so nicely and finally; so we did, dear sir, and to say that we were whipped by our own folly alone, is neither new nor consoling, but it is true.