two o'clock in the afternoon, to permit the
removal of the dead and wounded. To this Gardner at once refused
to agree unless Banks would agree to withdraw at all points to a
distance of eight hundred yards. He also demanded that the fleet
should drop down out of range. Banks was unable to consent. A
long correspondence followed, twelve letters in all, crossing and
recrossing, to the utter confusion of time. At length, shortly
after half-past three o'clock, Banks received Gardner's assent to
an armistice extending till seven o'clock. The conditions were
that the besiegers were to send to the lines of the defence, by
unarmed parties, such of the Confederate killed as remained unburied,
and such of their wounded as had not already been picked up and
sent to the rear. The killed and wounded of the Union army, lying
between their lines and the Confederate works, were to be cared
for in the same way.

Arnold was ordered to bring up the siege train, manned by the 1st
Indiana heavy artillery, and Houston to provide entrenching tools
and siege materials. When all the siege artillery was in position
there were forty pieces, of which six were 8-inch sea-coast howitzers
on siege carriages, eight 24-pounders, seven 30-pounder Parrotts,
four 6-inch rifles, four 9-inch Dahlgren guns, four 8-inch mortars,
three 10-inch mortars, and four 13-inch mortars. To these were
added twelve light batteries of sixty pieces, namely, six 6-pounder
Sawyer rifles, two 10-pounder Parrotts, twenty-six 12-pounder
Napoleons, two 12-pounder howitzers, twelve 3-inch rifles, and
twelve 20-pounder Parrotts. The Dahlgren guns were served by a
detachment of fifty-one men from the _Richmond_ and seventeen from
the _Essex_, under Lieutenant-Commander Edward Terry, with Ensign
Robert P. Swann, Ensign E. M. Shepard, and Master's Mates William
R. Cox and Edmund L. Bourne for chiefs of the gun divisions.

In the course of the next few days the eight regiments that had
been left on the Teche and the Atchafalaya rejoined the army before
Port Hudson, coming by way of Brashear, Algiers, and the river.
This gave to the cavalry under Grierson one more regiment, the 41st
Massachusetts, now mounted, and henceforth known as the 3d
Massachusetts cavalry, the three troops of the old 2d battalion
being merged in it; Weitzel got back the 114th New York; Paine
recovered the 4th Massachusetts and the 16th New Hampshire of
Ingraham's brigade, now practically broken up;