It was Jackson's problem not only to escape from these forces, rapidly concentrating to destroy him, but so far to defeat them in detail with his little army as to keep them where they were, while moving his own army to Lee's assistance. This required grand strategy on a grand scale, and Jackson responded to the demand with a brilliancy wholly unmatched in any other operation of the war. Putting aside details that would only serve to confuse the reader's mind, let us tell in outline the story of what the great commander of the "foot cavalry" did in this complex emergency. First of all, he withdrew his troops hurriedly from the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry to Winchester. When he got there he found that McDowell's force was in possession of Front Royal, only twelve miles from Strasburg, and Fremont was at Wardensville, only twenty miles away, while the head of his own column was eighteen miles distant from the crucial point, and its rear forty-three miles away. A large part of his force was footsore and exhausted after a hurried march of twenty-five miles in a single day, with frequent skirmishings to punctuate their progress. Nevertheless Jackson determined to reach and occupy Strasburg before his enemies could get there. He had eighteen miles to go while one of the enemy's columns had twenty and the other only twelve to travel. Their combined forces outnumbered his own about three to one, to say nothing of the 15,000 men of Banks and Saxton who had been pressing his rear all day. But he believed it possible for him, reckoning upon the extraordinary marching qualities of his men, to reach Strasburg before the enemy's columns could concentrate there. If he could do that he counted upon the superb fighting spirit of his men to overcome the enemy's three detachments by striking them separately in spite of the fact that one of those detachments outnumbered him by thirty-three per cent while each of the others nearly or quite equaled him in numbers. He acted instantly. His march was incumbered by 2,300 Federal prisoners and an embarrassingly large train consisting in its major part of wagons loaded with precious stores which he had captured from the enemy. But in spite of all he marched all the way to Strasburg on the 31st of May, while his rear guard succeeded in passing well beyond Winchester, some parts of it having covered thirty-five miles since the morning. The Federals pursuing under Saxton had stopped at Charlestown, their commander afterwards reporting that their exhaustion was such as to forbid a further advance.