On Monday, May 4, he had 80,000 men (Dodge) under his immediate command at Chancellorsville, with more than 20,000 under Sedgwick within easy call, as an available reinforcement. At the very most Lee could bring less than 30,000 to bear against him even if every movement in concentration should be successfully made. Yet according to his own testimony, given two years later, Hooker decided on Monday to retreat across the river. He called his major generals together "not as a council of war" he says in his testimony, but merely to find out how they felt with regard to the alternative policy of making what Hooker himself regarded as "a desperate move against the enemy in our front." That "desperate move" was the assailing of less than 30,000 men by more than 80,000 of as good soldiers as ever pulled a trigger, while 20,000 more remained within call as reinforcements. It was decided by Hooker, against the nearly unanimous advice of his lieutenants not to make that "desperate move," and the history of war records no more lame and impotent conclusion than that. It was decided by Hooker that the great army which had made a splendid strategic movement for the purpose of fighting Lee in the open and destroying him by overwhelming numbers, should run away from him and escape beyond the river if he should graciously permit it to do so. To that end--to render possible the escape of 80,000 resolute men from the assault of less than 30,000 of the enemy, all the engineering skill that the Army of the Potomac could command was brought to bear. It protected the roads with abattis and the bridge heads with batteries which the aggressively insistent Confederates shelled persistently. A sudden rise in the river for a time threatened the retreat with failure and placed a part of the force in danger of destruction or capture. But in the end Hooker succeeded in extricating his army from its position. Early on the morning of May 6, the last battalions of the Army of the Potomac withdrew across the river. Thus ended in failure the most brilliantly planned attempt that had yet been made to destroy Confederate resistance, conquer the Confederate capital and make a mercifully early end of a fratricidal war of stupendous proportions. Hooker reported his losses during the campaign at 17,285 men; Lee's loss was 12,277.