these would blaze aloft like gigantic
torches--true "torches of war"--let fall by the Federal commander in
his hasty retrograde.

Twenty-four hours afterward the larger part of General Lee's army
were back in their winter-quarters. In less than a week the Mine-Run
campaign had begun and ended. The movement of General Meade might have
been compared to that of the King of France and his forty thousand
men in the song; but the campaign was not ill devised, was rather
the dictate of sound military judgment. All that defeated it was the
extreme promptness of Lee, the excellent choice of position, and
the beginning of that great system of impromptu breastworks which
afterward became so powerful an engine against General Grant.

VI.

LEE IN THE AUTUMN AND WINTER OF 1863.

General Lee's headquarters remained, throughout the autumn and winter
of 1863, in a wood on the southern slope of the spur called Clarke's
Mountain, a few miles east of Orange Court-House.

Here his tents had been pitched, in a cleared space amid pines and
cedars; and the ingenuity of the "couriers," as messengers and
orderlies were called in the Southern army, had fashioned alleys and
walks leading to the various tents, the tent of the commanding general
occupying the centre. Of the gentlemen of General Lee's staff we have
not considered it necessary to speak; but it may here be said that it
was composed of officers of great efficiency and of the most courteous
manners, from Colonel Taylor, the indefatigable adjutant-general, to
the youngest and least prominent member of the friendly group. Among
these able assistants of the commander-in-chief were Colonel Marshall,
of Maryland, a gentleman of distinguished intellect; Colonel Peyton,
who had entered the battle of Manassas as a private in the ranks, but,
on the evening of that day, for courage and efficiency, occupied the
place of a commissioned officer on Beauregard's staff; and others
whose names were comparatively unknown to the army, but whose part in
the conduct of affairs, under direction of Lee, was most important.

With the gentlemen of his staff General Lee lived on terms of the most
kindly regard. He was a strict disciplinarian, and abhorred the theory
that a commissioned officer, from considerations of rank, should hold
himself above the private soldiers; but there was certainly no fault
of this description to be found at army headquarters, and the general
and his staff worked toget