, fired fifty shots at it, knocked it about
the ears of the garrison, and setting fire to it, smoked them out and
marched them off as prisoners.

French's report of this affair, written a month later, from which the
above is condensed, is very interesting and dramatic, and regarded as a
literary composition, of no mean merit. He has certainly made the best of
a bad business, and if his facts do not quite tally with those of his
opponents, at least the discrepancies were not officially noticed at
headquarters, nor probably would a gloomier account of the affair have
been considered more inspiriting. Those rations would have been extremely
convenient, could they, or even a part of them, have been hauled away for
distribution among the hungry Confederates, and if that were
impracticable, it would have been at least a noble stroke to have
destroyed them. On this head French's report is silent; nor does he
endeavor to explain how it happened that so vital a part of his own
program was omitted. In effect, the play had been badly broken up by the
attentions of the gallery, and Hamlet had slipped out of it.

French is without excuse for his fear of Sherman's approach, baseless as
we know it to have been. Armstrong is responsible for despatches to him
suggesting it. All the same, the evidence is conclusive that French was
beaten, that he knew it, and that he had to withdraw quite independently
of Sherman's movements.

A Confederate historian, K. S. Bevier, writes as follows on this point:
"The men of French's Division had now become so much scattered that it was
impossible to gather a sufficient number to give any hope of successful
assault on the Fort."

What can wholly be pardoned to French is the unstinted commendation he
bestows on the gallantry of his men.

These poor fellows, ragged and hungry, with but a handful or two of
parched corn in their haversacks, had marched all day on the 3rd; had
worked all that night destroying the railroad; had worked and marched all
day on the 4th; had marched to Allatoona during that night, and had fought
nearly all day on the 5th. Nor is it forbidden to those who felt the vigor
of their dashing onset and the undaunted determination with which they
rallied again and again to the assault of the intrenchments, or who
witnessed the hand-to-hand encounters with sword and bayonet, with butts
of guns, and even with loose pieces of rock, to appreciate the intrepidity
and resolution with which