In preparation for that campaign he earnestly begged Lee for reinforcements--Lee being then in general command of the Confederate forces--and all that Lee could do was to assign to his command the little force under Edward Johnson west of Staunton, with the privilege of calling to his aid such troops as General Ewell had with him on the line of the Rappahannock, east of the Blue Ridge. His own immediate command, together with Ewell's and Edward Johnson's, amounted in all to a little less than 17,000 men, divided into three widely separated columns with the Blue Ridge and a whole day's march between his own position and that of his chief lieutenant. Opposed to him were Banks at Harrisonburg with 19,000 men,--or more than Jackson's total possible strength--Milroy and Schenck lying to the west of Staunton with 6,000 men and Fremont advancing from West Virginia with 9,000 more. In brief, by concentrating all his widely scattered forces, Jackson could bring to bear upon his problem no more than 17,000 men at the very most, while he stood beleaguered by no less than 34,000, under generals who already held the greater part of the valley and seemed easily able to occupy the rest of it, including Staunton and the chief railroad lines, at will. When Jackson definitely learned that he could have no other help than that of Ewell and Edward Johnson, he boldly planned to concentrate his 17,000 men and with them make war upon his 34,000 adversaries. His hope lay in secrecy and celerity of operation. His plan was to bring the three widely separated parts of his army together without the enemy's knowledge, and to hurl the whole like a thunderbolt against one after another of his enemy's divisions. The largest of those divisions,--that under Banks's personal command at Harrisonburg--outnumbered Jackson's total force by all of 2,000 men, while the other two divisions were nearly enough equal to his own to make an assault upon either of them perilous. Moreover the geographical problem was such that Jackson could at no point bring all his inferior force to bear at once. He must always keep a considerable part of it detached and out of action, lest his adversary seize upon a position of commanding importance. Nevertheless, this truly Napoleonic commander planned a campaign in which, with his 17,000 men, he should defend Staunton and destroy in detail his adversary's double numbers. Thus began that campaign whose strategy has been called by a historian "massive thimble-rigging," because its success depended upon Jackson's ability to conceal his movements and make sudden appearances in quite unexpected places.