Near Burgess’ Mill, heavy Confederate opposition was met and a spirited engagement took place. The failure of Union Generals Hancock of the II Corps and Warren of the V Corps to coordinate the efforts of their respective columns, coupled with a slashing thrust by Heth’s infantry and dogged resistance by Hampton’s cavalry and horse-artillery, resulted in a speedy Northern withdrawal. The Boydton Plank Road, for a time at least, remained in Southern hands, and Grant’s encircling movement to cut Lee’s railroad was checked. The approach of winter made any large-scale effort by either side less probable, although daily skirmishes and tightening of the siege lines continued. The slackening of hostile action was used to good advantage by Union and Confederate alike, as it had been in the previous respites between battles, in the strengthening of the battlelines and efforts to develop some rudimentary comforts in the cheerless camps. Throughout the last 2 months of 1864 and the 1st month of the new year there were no strong efforts by either side before Petersburg; picket duty, sniping, and patrolling prevailed. The only action out of the trenches was the Hicksford Raid in December when a strong Union force destroyed the Weldon Railroad as far as Hicksford, about 40 miles south of Petersburg. Lee now had a 35-mile front, with the left resting on the Williamsburg Road east of Richmond and the right on Hatcher’s Run southwest of Petersburg. To hold this long line he had in December an effective troop strength of only 66,533. Facing these undernourished and ragged soldiers were, according to official Union returns of the same month, 110,364 well-fed and equipped Federals. The picture throughout the rest of the South was no more reassuring to Confederate sympathizers. In the Shenandoah Valley, northwest of Richmond, Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s army had finally crushed Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s Southern forces at Cedar Creek on October 19 and was destroying the scattered resistance that remained. Far to the southwest, Sherman had captured Atlanta, Ga., in September, and Savannah had surrendered on December 21. As the new year dawned, his army was prepared to march north toward Grant. To complete the gloomy Southern prospects, Fort Fisher, guardian bastion of Wilmington, N.C., the last of the Confederacy’s Atlantic coast ports to remain open, was under fatal bombardment by mid-January. [Illustration: _Not everyone was shooting all the time. Often only handpicked sharpshooters traded shots from the trenches and tried to pick off each other’s artillerymen. An artist caught these men of the Federal XVIII Corps at their daily, deadly business._]