About five o’clock in the afternoon the rebels assailed General Banks with a destructive fire of both artillery and infantry. General Crawford’s brigade was conspicuous in the battle. It consisted of the Tenth Maine, Twenty-eighth New York, Forty-sixth Pennsylvania, and Fifth Connecticut. The enemy’s batteries were stationed on Cedar Mountain, considerably above the positions occupied by the Union troops. The two forces were about a mile from each other: and the battle was waged by artillery alone. The rebels rapidly increased the number of their batteries, and concentrated a fire of terrible severity upon the Union troops. At last, at six o’clock, the order was given to charge, and the troops sprang forward, at the full run, with bayonets ready for a desperate charge. Before they had proceeded far the enemy opened a most destructive fire upon them, from his batteries. A wake of the dead and the wounded was left in their track as they pressed heroically forward under the terrific fire of the rebels. But at length retreat became inevitable, and the brave patriots reluctantly retired. Night terminated a most unequal conflict. General Pope’s official account gave the number of General Banks’ troops at seven thousand; while the rebel accounts stated that the enemy on this occasion were fifteen thousand strong. Both parties claimed the victory; but assuredly it did not belong to the Union troops, though they might well feel satisfied with their own conduct. They had held at bay a force outnumbering their own two to one. Generals Banks, Pope, and Sigel held a conference at about midnight. They had selected for the night bivouac a hill which overlooked the battle-field. Suddenly, while they conferred as to their future movements, the party were put to a flight by an unexpected shower of bullets from some rebel pickets, who had, unawares, crept quite near them. Sunday morning dawned upon the two armies, and saw each one in the same position which it had occupied on the previous night; but both the Union and rebel army had suffered too severely to renew the fight immediately. Monday was a melancholy day; and was spent in the sad duty of bringing in the dead and wounded. The rebels were slowly retreating, and left many of their dead upon the field. They were pursued, as far as the banks of the Rapidan, by General Buford with a column of cavalry. The National loss on Saturday was fifteen hundred; that of the rebels was much less. Dispatches of General Lee had been captured by the Federals, and it was ascertained by these documents that the rebel general proposed to destroy General Pope’s small army before he could get reinforcements; and the great strength of Lee’s army, as compared with that of the Union, was indeed appalling. Already that immense army was crossing the Rapidan, and by the 18th of August its whole line confronted the forces under General Pope.