rsons and Tappan and Walker melted away, and before anything
could be done with Polignac, the whole Confederate army was in
hopeless confusion. Their disordered ranks were pushed back about
a mile, with a loss of five guns, and after nightfall Taylor's
infantry and part of his cavalry fell back six miles to the stream
on which Emory had encamped on the morning of the previous day,
while the cavalry retired to Mansfield, but Taylor himself slept
near the field of battle with the remnant of Debray's troopers.
In the superb right wheel, three of the guns lost at Sabine
Cross-Roads were retaken.

As soon as the news of the battle of Sabine Cross-Roads reached
Kirby Smith at Shreveport, he rode to the front and joined Taylor
after nightfall on the 9th of April. The earliest Confederate
despatches and orders of Kirby Smith and Taylor claimed a signal
and glorious victory, and to this view Taylor seems to have adhered;
but in a report dated August 28, 1864, Smith says, in giving his
reasons for not adopting Taylor's ambitious plan of pursuing Banks
to New Orleans, that Taylor's troops

"were finally repulsed and thrown into confusion . . . The Missouri
and Arkansas troops, with the brigade of Walker's division, were
broken and scattered. The enemy recovered cannon which we had
captured, and two of our pieces were left in his hands. To my
great relief I found in the morning that the enemy had fallen back
during the night. . . . Our troops were completely paralyzed by
the repulse at Pleasant Hill."

In an article written in 1888 (1) he adds:

"Our repulse at Pleasant Hill was so complete and our command was
so disorganized that had Banks followed up his success vigorously
he would have met with but feeble opposition to his advance on
Shreveport. . . . Polignac's (previously Mouton's) division of
Louisiana infantry was all that was intact of Taylor's force. . . .
Our troops were completely paralyzed and disorganized by the
repulse at Pleasant Hill."

Again, in an intercepted letter, very clear and outspoken, Lieutenant
Edward Cunningham, one of Kirby Smith's aides-de-camp, is even more
emphatic:

"That it was impossible for us to pursue Banks immediately--under
four or five days--cannot be gainsaid. It was impossible . . .
because we had been beaten, demoralized, paralyzed, in the fight
of the 9th."

The losses of the Union army in the battle of Pleasant Hill were
152 killed, 859 wounded, 495 missing; in all, 1,50