engaged them, and, after a considerable battle, they retreated. We captured and destroyed some two hundred wagons, some prisoners were taken, and a good many men on both sides were killed and wounded. Many of Rosecrans’s men had reached Nashville, reporting that his army had been badly beaten. Still no movement had been made by General Bragg at Murfreesboro. The enemy had taken advantage of this inactivity by collecting together their broken columns and taking position on high ground on the banks of Stones River, and crowned it with a number of batteries--fifty-seven pieces--well protected, awaiting the movement of General Bragg. On the first day of January he attacked this well-fortified place of the enemy with the single division of General Breckenridge. After a most gallant assault by Breckenridge, he was repulsed with heavy loss. That night the cavalry of Wheeler occupied the works of the infantry when they withdrew toward Shelbyville. General Bragg, it seems, had sent off during this lull in movements all of his wounded and the prisoners he had taken. At daylight on the 2d of January, 1863, Wheeler’s cavalry also withdrew, following the infantry toward Shelbyville. No pursuit was made. The Federals were as much surprised as the Confederates at the result, and it was sometime during the day before they could realize the fact of the withdrawal of Bragg’s troops. Much adverse criticism was made of General Bragg’s failure to take advantage of the victory he had obtained in the first days of the battle, and especially of the assault he made against the well-prepared works of the enemy, when it should have been with his entire army instead of a single division. Such was the opinion of the humblest soldier in his army. CHAPTER II. FROM FORT DONELSON TO CHICKAMAUGA. General Bragg upon reaching Shelbyville went regularly into camp, and remained there some three or four months drilling, recruiting, and strengthening his army. General Wheeler, with his corps, was on the front watching the movement of the Federal army at Murfreesboro, scouting all the approaches, with an occasional scrap with the enemy, sometimes approaching the dignity of a battle.