"As I arrived down on the creek I said aloud, 'If I could send somebody back I would give my life for it. We are lost here if they don't follow.' My Adjutant, Majthenyi, hearing, feared that he will be sent back, jumped down from his horse and busy himself opening the fence. I expected to find the enemy on the other end of Springfield, but, unexpectedly coming out of the woods to an open place, I was fired on in front of mine command. Halted for a minute, seeing that, or a bold forward march under a cross-fire, or a doubtful retreat with losing most of my men, I took the first and commanded 'March!' Under a heavy cross-fire (in trot), down the little hill in the lane--two hundred yards--to a creek, where I ordered the fence to be opened--marched in my command--ordered them to form, and with the war-cry of 'Frémont and the Union,' we made the attack. The First Company, forty-seven strong, against five or six hundred infantry, and the rest against the cavalry, was made so successfully, that, in three minutes, the cavalry run in every direction, and the infantry retreated in the thick wood, and their cavalry in every direction. The infantry we were not able to follow in the woods, so that we turned against the running cavalry. With those we had in different places, and in differing numbers, attacked and dispersed--not only in one place, but our men were so much emboldened, that twenty or thirty attacked twenty, thirty times their numbers, and these single-handed attacks, fighting here and there on their own hook, did us more harm than their grand first attack. By them we lost our prisoners. Single-handed they fought bravely, specially one--a lieutenant--who, in a narrow lane, wanted to cut himself through about sixty of us, running in that direction. But he was not able to go very far. Firing two or three times, he ran against me, and put his revolver on my side, but, through the movement of the horse, the shot passed behind me. He was a perfect target--first cut down and after shot. He was a brave man; for that reason I felt some pity to kill him. We went to their encampment, but the ground was deserted, and we returned to the Court-house, raised the company-flag, liberated prisoners, and collected my forces together--which numbered not more, including myself, than seventy men on horseback. The rest--without horses, or wounded, and about thirty who had dispersed in pursuit of the enemy--I could not gather up; and it was midnight before they reached me--and some of them next day. I never was sick in my life, Madame, till what time I find myself leaving Springfield, in the dark, with only sixty-nine men and officers--I was the seventy. I was perfectly sick and disheartened, so I could hardly sit in the saddle, to think of so dear a victory. But it ended so that fifteen is dead--two died after--ten prisoners, who was released, and of the wounded, not one will lose a finger. In all seventeen lost.