"The reserve brigade of your division will move to Snickersville on the 29th. Snickersville should be your point of concentration, and the point from which you should operate in destroying toward the Potomac. "Four days' subsistence will be taken by your command. Forage can be gathered from the country through which you pass. "You will return to your present camp, via Snickersville, on the fifth day. "By command of Major-General Sheridan. James W. Forsyth, Lieutenant-Colonel and Chief of Staff. "Brevet Major-General Merritt Commanding First Cavalry Division." In pursuance of these orders Federal soldiers in three bodies entered the county on their devastating work. Williamson, himself a member of Mosby's band and an eyewitness of what followed, writes: "The Federals separated into three parties, one of which went along the Bloomfield road and down Loudoun, in the direction of the Potomac; another passed along the Piedmont pike to Rectortown, Salem and around to Middleburg; while the main body kept along the turnpike to Aldie, where they struck the Snickersville pike. Thus they scoured the country completely from the Blue Ridge to the Bull Run Mountains. From Monday afternoon, November 28th, until Friday morning December 2nd, they ranged through the beautiful valley of Loudoun and a portion of Fauquier County, burning and laying waste. They robbed the people of everything they could destroy or carry off--horses, cows, cattle, sheep, hogs etc; killing poultry, insulting women, pillaging houses and in many cases robbing even the poor negroes. They burned all the mills and factories as well as hay, wheat, corn, straw and every description of forage. Barns and stables, whether full or empty, were burned--Colonel Mosby did not call the command together, therefore there was no organized resistance, but Rangers managed to save a great deal of livestock for the farmers by driving it off to places of safety. In many instances, after the first day of burning, we would run off stock from the path of the raiders into the limits of the district already burned over, and there it was kept undisturbed or in a situation where it could be more easily driven off and concealed...."[177] [177] Williamson, 317.