The contending forces were too large to admit of rapid movement on either side; but the better discipline and greater attention to detail on the part of the allies gave them an advantage in the race, and they slowly but surely gained on the revolutionists. The latter were falling back, with the evident intention of resting behind the defences of Washington, when the advancing troops of the allies began to press upon their rear. By a strange fatality, this encounter took place near the town of Gettysburg; and it was on that historic field, which saw the most decisive struggle of the civil war, that the last battle of 1888 was also fought. It was the 11th of June when the two armies found themselves once more face to face. For the whole of the preceding day and evening impassioned socialistic and Irish agitators had been passing around the revolutionary camp, inciting their hearers to wilder and fiercer fanaticism. So successful had they been that even the camp followers who had fled in panic out of New York to escape the allied guns, became clamorous for an opportunity to meet their victors once more in open fight. Early the following morning (June 12, 1888) the battle opened. For two days the desperate fight raged around the little town; and the two “Round Tops,” whose summits were the objects of constant attack by one party or the other, once more shed rivulets of blood down their steep and rocky sides. The allies were by far the better armed and the better disciplined; but the revolutionists fought literally “to the death.” They introduced a new and terrible element into civilized warfare by refusing to give quarter to their prisoners. The allied soldiers soon learned of this barbarism, and, despite the attempts of their officers to restrain them, retaliated in kind. Their rage became as furious as the fanaticism of their opponents. The close of the second day found the hordes of the revolution in panic and flight. They were more than defeated, they were annihilated. Their disorganization was as rapid and complete as had been their first successes, a year before. Not a brigade was left to guard a retreat. The whole array of survivors dissolved into mere bands and scattered over the country.