Acting with his usual decision, Sheridan placed his captives in care of
a provost-guard, and sent them at once to the rear. Those which escaped,
he ordered the fiery Custer to pursue with brand and vengeance; and they
were pressed far into the desolate forest, spent and hungry, many
falling by the way of wounds or exhaustion, many pressed down by hoof or
sabre-stroke, and many picked up in mercy and sent back to rejoin their
brethren in bonds. We captured in all fully six thousand prisoners.
General Sheridan estimated them modestly at five thousand, but the
provost-marshal assured me that he had a line four abreast a full mile
long. I entirely bear him out, having ridden for forty minutes in a
direction opposite to that they were taking, and growing weary at last
of counting or of seeing them. They were fine, hearty fellows, almost
all Virginians, and seemed to take their capture not unkindly. They wore
the gray and not very attractive uniform of the Confederacy, but looked
to be warm and fat, and passing along in the night, under the fir-trees,
conveyed at most a romantic idea of grief and tribulation. They were put
in a huge pen, midway between Big and Little Five Forks, for the night,
the officers sharing the same fare with the soldiers, from whom,
indeed, they were undistinguishable.

Thus ended the splendid victory of Five Forks, the least bloody to us,
but the most successful, proportionate to numbers engaged, that has been
fought during the war. One man out of every three engaged took a
prisoner. We captured four cannon, an ambulance train and baggage-teams,
eight thousand muskets, and twenty-eight battle-flags. General
Longstreet, it is thought, commanded. Neither he nor Pickett nor Bushrod
Johnston, division commanders, were taken; they were wise enough to see
that the day was lost, and imitated Bonaparte after Waterloo.

I attribute this victory almost entirely to Sheridan; it was won by
strategy and persistence, and in great part by men who would not stand
fire the day before. The happy distribution of duties between cavalry
and infantry excited a fine rivalry, and the consciousness of Sheridan's
guidance inspired confidence. Has any battle so successful ever been
fought in Virginia? or, indeed, in the East? I think not. It has opened
to us the enemy's flank, so that we can sweep down upon the Appomattox
and inside of his breastworks, enabling us to shorten our lines of
intrenchments one half, if no more,