reached the Shenandoah. There, in the charred
and smoking timbers of the bridge, the groups of Federal prisoners on
the plain, the Confederates gathering the wounded, and the faint
rattle of musketry far down the Luray Valley, he saw the result of
his timidity.

Massing his batteries on the western bluffs, and turning his guns in
impotent wrath upon the plain, he drove the ambulances and their
escort from the field. But the Confederate dead and wounded had
already been removed, and the only effect of his spiteful salvoes was
that his suffering comrades lay under a drenching rain until he
retired to Harrisonburg. By that time many, whom their enemies would
have rescued, had perished miserably, and "not a few of the dead,
with some perchance of the mangled living, were partially devoured by
swine before their burial."* (* Dabney volume 2.)

The pursuit of Tyler was pressed for nine miles down the river. The
Ohio regiments, dispersed at first by the Confederate artillery,
gathered gradually together, and held the cavalry in check. Near
Conrad's Store, where Shields, marching in desperate haste to the
sound of the cannonade, had put his two remaining brigades in
position across the road, the chase was stayed. The Federal commander
admits that he was only just in time. Jackson's horsemen, he says,
were enveloping the column; a crowd of fugitives was rushing to the
rear, and his own cavalry had dispersed. The Confederate army, of
which some of the brigades and nearly the whole artillery had been
halted far in rear, was now withdrawn; but, compelled to move by
circuitous paths in order to avoid the fire of Fremont's batteries,
it was after midnight before the whole had assembled in Brown's Gap.
More than one of the regiments had marched over twenty miles and had
been heavily engaged.

Port Republic was the battle most costly to the Army of the Valley
during the whole campaign. Out of 5900 Confederates engaged 804 were
disabled.*

(* The troops actually engaged were as follows:--

4 Regiments of Winder's Brigade 1200

The Louisiana Brigade, 5 regiments 2500

Scott's Brigade, 3 regiments 900

31st Virginia

40th Virginia } 600

Artillery (5 batteries) 300

Cavalry 400

5,900)

The Federal losses were heavier. The killed, wounded, and missing
(including 450 captured) amounted to 1001, or one-fourth of Tyler's
strength.

The success which the Confederates had achieved was undoubtedly
important. The Valley ar