Ewell bowed and turned to obey--I returned to Stuart.
He was pushing the Federal cavalry "from pillar to post." Driven back
from the hill, where they had planted their artillery, they had
retreated on Brandy; Stuart had followed like a fate; Gordon, sent
round to the left, struck their right flank with his old sabreurs; Fitz
Lee, coming up on the right, thundered down on their left--and in the
woods around Brandy took place one of those cavalry combats which, as
my friends, the novelists say, "must be seen to be appreciated!" If the
reader will imagine, in the dusk of evening, a grand hurly-burly made
up of smoke, dust, blood, yells, clashing swords, banging carbines,
thundering cannon, and wild cheers, he will have a faint idea of that
"little affair" at Brandy.
A queer circumstance made this fight irresistibly comic.
Fitz Lee had repulsed Buford on the Rapidan; followed him on his
retreat, harassing him at every step--when, just as Buford reached
Brandy, with Fitz Lee at his heels, Kilpatrick descended on Fitz Lee's
rear by the Sperryville road, and Stuart thundered down on _his_!
Thus Fitz Lee was pursuing Buford; Kilpatrick, Fitz Lee; and Stuart,
Kilpatrick! It was a grand and comic jumble--except that it came very
near being any thing but comic to that joyous cavalier, "General Fitz,"
as we called him--caught as he was between Generals Buford and
Kilpatrick!
General Fitz was the man for a "tight place," however--and "his
people," as he called his cavalry, soon cut through to Stuart.
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