In August, 1864, General Sheridan was assigned to the command of the Middle Military Division, comprising the Middle Department and the Departments of Washington, the Susquehanna, and West Virginia. Occupying the Shenandoah Valley, in front of Sheridan, General Early lay, with about eighteen thousand Confederate troops. To drive these troops out of, or at least further up, the Valley, and to keep them so employed that no part of them should be detached from Early to send to Hood in his defence of Atlanta against the attack of Sherman, was Sheridan's first concern during the summer and fall of '64. In pursuance of this plan, on the 10th of August, Sheridan began to move out his forces from Halltown for the possession of the Shenandoah Valley. When Early's positions were reached, he fell back, and continued to fall back, until he reached Fisher's Hill, beyond Strasburg. In pursuing Early, Sheridan had passed several gaps in the mountains which skirt the Valley, and left them unguarded. Moseby, learning of this, hastily got together as many of his guerillas as possible, dashed through Snicker's Gap on the 13th, struck Sheridan's supply-train, which was only guarded by Kenly's brigade of one hundred days' men, at Berryville, and, before the guard had fairly recovered from the panic, Moseby had captured the entire train, consisting of seventy-five wagons, from five to six hundred horses and mules, two hundred beef cattle, and a large quantity of stores. He also secured over two hundred prisoners. His own loss was only two killed and three wounded. The attack and loss were so sudden, so unexpected, and so exaggerated in the telling from one soldier to another, that they seemed for the moment to paralyze Sheridan's entire army; so much so that he deemed it expedient to make a retrograde movement, which he continued until he reached, on the 21st of August, a position about two miles out from Charlestown. While Sheridan was thus falling back from day to day, Moseby's guerillas hung upon his rear and flanks, treacherously capturing and killing whenever opportunity offered. In one instance, it is alleged, after taking some Union cavalrymen prisoners; after, indeed, they had fully surrendered as prisoners of war and _been disarmed_, Moseby ordered _every one of them_ brutally murdered on the spot, in pursuance of his maxim that "dead men never bite." In retaliation for this terrible outrage, Sheridan ordered that from thenceforth every house and barn of these half-guerillas, half-farmers in the Valley, that could possibly be# reached by his cavalrymen, should be destroyed.