Breckinridge and Cleburne, there was loss of life enough. What was gained was this: Thomas called for reinforcements, and Rosecrans, to strengthen his left, began to weaken his right. To the aid of Baird and Johnson, Palmer and Reynolds behind the breastworks, came first a brigade of Negley’s division, then regiments from Palmer’s reserve, and then from the left troops of McCook and Sheridan. The divisions of Gist and Liddell, Walker’s corps, moved to the aid of Breckinridge, Gist throwing himself with fury against the works before which Helm had fallen. It was eleven o’clock. Bragg ordered in Stewart’s division. The three brigades—Clayton, Brown, and Bate—charged under a deadly fire, “the most terrible fire it has ever been my fortune to witness.” Brown’s men, exposed to an enfilade, broke, but Clayton and Bate rushed on past the clearing, past the burning house, past the Chattanooga road. They drove the blue within entrenchments, they took a battery and many prisoners. Thomas sent again to Rosecrans, and Rosecrans further weakened his right. His adjutant forwarded an order to McCook. The left must be supported at all hazards, “even if the right is drawn wholly to the present left.” After Van Cleve had been sent, and Sheridan and Negley, there came yet another message that the left was heavily pressed. The aide bringing it stated that Brannan was out of line and Reynolds’s right exposed. Rosecrans sent an order to Wood, commanding a division— “_The general commanding directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible and support him_.” It was the fatal, the pivotal order. Wood moved—and left a great opening in the blue line of battle. Toward the filling of this gap there moved with precision two brigades of Sheridan’s. But some one else moved first, with a masterful change of plan, made with the swiftness of that glint of Opportunity’s eye. Longstreet had made a column of attack, three lines, eight brigades. Long, grey, magnificent, these moved forward, steady as steel, eyes just narrowed in the face of the hurricane of shot and shell. “Old Pete,” “the old war horse,“ rode with them, massively directing. The smoke was drifting, drifting over the field of Chickamauga, over the River of Death and the slopes of Missionary Ridge. Underfoot was dust and charred herbage and the dead and the wounded. On the right the roar of the fight never ceased—Forrest, Breckinridge, Cleburne, Walker, Stewart, and George Thomas behind his breastworks. Longstreet with his eight brigades, swinging toward the right, saw, through a rift in the smoke, the movement of Wood and the gap which now, suddenly, was made between the Federal right and left. A kind of slow light came into Longstreet’s face. ”_By the right flank, wheel!—Double-quick!—Forward! Charge!_”