mbankment. Before
them was the open plain, and the backward surge to the river of the
broken foe. It was three o'clock of the afternoon. Burnside sent an
order to Franklin to attack again, but Franklin disobeyed.

Upon the left Longstreet's battle now swelled to giant proportions.
Marye's Hill, girdled by that stone wall, crowned by the Washington
Artillery, loomed impregnable. Against it the North tossed to
destruction division after division. They marched across the bare and
sullen plain, they charged; the hill flashed into fire, a thunder
rolled, the smoke cloud deepened. When it lifted the charge was seen to
be broken, retreating, the plain was seen to be strewed with dead. The
blue soldiers were staunch and steadfast. They saw that their case was
hapless, yet on they came across the shelterless plain. Ordered to
charge, they charged; charged very gallantly, receded with a stubborn
slowness. They were good fighters, worthy foes, and the grey at
Fredericksburg hailed them as such. Forty thousand men charged Marye's
Hill--six great assaults--and forty thousand were repulsed. The winter
day closed in. Twelve thousand men in blue lay dead or wounded at the
foot of the southern hills, before Longstreet on the left and Stonewall
Jackson on the right.

Five thousand was the grey loss. The Rockbridge Artillery had fought
near the Horse Artillery by Hamilton's Crossing. All day the guns had
been doggedly at work; horses and drivers and gunners and guns and
caissons; there was death and wounds and wreckage. In the wintry, late
afternoon, when the battle thunders were lessening, Major John Pelham
came by and looked at Rockbridge. Much of Rockbridge lay on the ground,
the rest stood at the guns. "Why, boys," said Pelham, "you stand killing
better than any I ever saw!"

They stood it well, both blue and grey. It was stern fighting at
Fredericksburg, and grey and blue they fought it sternly and well. The
afternoon closed in, cold and still, with a red sun yet veiled by drifts
of crape-like smoke. The Army of the Potomac, torn, decimated, rested
huddled in Fredericksburg and on the river banks. The Army of Northern
Virginia rested with few or no camp-fires on the southern hills. Between
the two foes stretched the freezing plain, and on the plain lay thick
the Federal dead and wounded. They lay thick, thick, before the stone
wall. At hand, full target for the fire of either force, was a small,
white house. In the house lived Mrs