tly to Mount
Sterling. Colonel Cluke at the head of a body of men entered the town
from the east, while Lieutenant Colonel Stoner with the two companies
from the Eleventh Kentucky, the men of the Ninth under Captain
McCormick, and Hopkins' scouts, charged in from the northwest.

The enemy fell back and shut themselves up in the court-house. Stoner
charged them, but was driven back by a terrible fire from the
windows--the garrison was stronger than the force he led against them. A
detachment of thirty men were then ordered to advance on the street into
which the Winchester pike leads, and burn the houses in which the
Federals had ensconced themselves. With torch, axe and sledge hammer
these men under McCormick and Cunningham forced their way into the heart
of the town. As they reached the "Old Hotel," which was occupied by a
body of the Federals, and used also as a hospital, a flag of truce was
displayed. McCormick, Cunningham, and six others entered, and were
coolly informed by some forty or fifty soldiers that the sick had
surrendered, but they (the soldier) had not, and threatened to fire upon
them, from the upper rooms, if they tried to escape from the building.
At the suggestion of Lieutenant Saunders, the eight Confederates forced
the sick men to leave the house with them, in a mingled crowd, thus
rendering it impossible for the Federals to fire without endangering the
lives of their comrades. Before quitting the house, they set it on fire.
In a short time the entire Federal force in the town surrendered, and
victors and vanquished went to work together to extinguish the flames.

Colonel Cluke took four hundred and twenty-eight prisoners, two hundred
and twenty wagons laden with valuable stores, five hundred mules, and
nearly one thousand stand of arms. Captain Virgil Pendleton, a most
gallant and valuable officer was killed in this affair. Captain Ferrill
and Lieutenant Maupin were seriously wounded. Cluke's loss was three
killed, and a few wounded. The enemy's but little greater.

The Union men of Mount Sterling were much mortified by this last capture
of their town. The previous evening bets were running high that Cluke
would be made prisoner. Cluke immediately evacuated the town, and was
attacked some five miles to the eastward of it, by a force of Federal
cavalry, preceding a body of infantry which were approaching to relieve
the place. An insignificant skirmish resulted, and Cluke marched to
Owingsville unp