Many of his followers were recruited in Loudoun County. A few before the advent of Mosby had pursued peaceable vocations; but the command consisted in the main of men who had seen active service in the cavalry and infantry regiments, but tiring of the routine and discipline of the camp had returned to their homes in Loudoun and adjoining counties. At times he had with him dauntless spirits who had been incapacitated for infantry duty by reason of wounds received in action, some of these carrying crutches along with them tied to their saddle bows. At another time he enrolled several experienced fighters who had been absent from their regiments without leave ever since the first battle of Bull Run--a period of nearly two years. With this promiscuous following, which at no time exceeded one hundred men, he instituted a long unbroken series of successful strategems, surprises, and night attacks, harassing the communications of the Federal armies, confusing their plans by capturing dispatches, destroying supply trains, subjecting their outposts to the wear and tear of a perpetual skirmish, in short, inflicting all the mischief possible for a small body of cavalry moving rapidly from point to point on the communications of an army. He believed that by incessant attacks he could compel the enemy either greatly to contract his lines or to reinforce them, both of which would have been of great advantage to the Southern cause. By assuming the aggressive, a rule from which he not once departed, he could force the enemy to guard a hundred points, leaving himself free to select any one of them for attack. But the theories, purposes, and methods of this peer of partisan leaders is best explained by himself. Simply and unostentatiously, but withal convincingly, expressed, they give to the man and his deeds the unmistakable semblance of fairness and legitimacy. These, together with his masterly defense of partisan warfare, follow in modified and disconnected form: "The military value of a partisan's work is not measured by the amount of property destroyed, or the number of men killed or captured, but by the number he keeps watching. Every soldier withdrawn from the front to guard the rear of an army is so much taken from its fighting strength.