The Union forces rose up wearily but steadily, and awaited the approach of the Confederate host, known to be at least twice or thrice their own number, and led on by that sanguinary commander otherwise described by a writer who accompanied him through all his battles in the United States service and thoroughly knows his habits of speech and action,[13]--as "the flowery and ever-thirsty John Bankhead Magruder--the pet of _Newport_ and the petter of _old wine_." The rebels moved forward in good order; slowly at first, and then, as if spurred on irresistibly from behind in all parts of the field, the whole dingy-gray mass broke from the "common time" step into that "dog-trot" known in the tactics of the present day as the "double-quick." At the same moment they broke into those shrieks of horrible dissonance, remarked in the fight of the morning, rising even above the din of the opening artillery, and more resembling the whoops of the copper-skinned warriors of the renegade Albert Pike, than soldiers of what is called a Christian nation, led on by a commander believing himself the very "pink of chivalry." [Footnote 13: White--"Mexican War Sketches."] Gallantly, it must be owned by all who saw the movement, did the gray-clads spring forward to the encounter, rushing over the field at an accelerating speed which soon increased to a full run. Then and not till then again burst the deadly storm of defence. From the Federal lines across the hill there belched murderous blasts of grape and canister into their front, and from the rifle-pits and woods went shrieking showers of rifle shots and Minie balls into their flanks, the two terrible influences almost sweeping them away like leaves caught by the gale. They fell by hundreds at a discharge, encumbering the ground and leaving wide gaps in their ranks; yet still their dense columns closed again and dashed resolutely up, until more than two-thirds the distance across Carter's Field was accomplished. Here the carnage, from the combined effects of artillery and small-arms at short range, became absolutely terrible among the rebels--such a spectacle as even loyal soldiers, gazing at it, could not but feel to be a species of wholesale murder for which the cause could no more than give excuse. The bones in the rebel regiments seemed to be crushed like window-glass in a hailstorm; masses of gory pulp that had but a few moments before been men, began to form an absolute coating for the ground; and the fierce yells of attack had become awfully commingled with the shrieks of those mangled beyond endurance and dying in agony. It was too much for human bravery to withstand--probably no troops in the world would have stood longer under that withering fire, than the brave but misguided tools of the secession heresy. Their lines began to waver with a ricketty, swaying motion, to and fro, as if the whole body was one man and he was exhausted and tottering; then there-was a movement to the "right about,"