Before these two regiments were organized came the President's call for three hundred thousand militia to serve nine months, under which Vermont's quota was nearly five thousand. The five regiments were quickly raised and sent forward, and to three of them, just before their term of enlistment expired, fell a full share of the glories of Gettysburg, under the intrepid leader, General Stannard. The charge of his Vermont Brigade beat back Pickett's furious assault, and decided the fate of the day.[115] Once more the brave little commonwealth was called on to furnish a regiment, and the 17th was sent to the front with ranks yet unfilled. Its third battalion drill was held on the battlefield of the Wilderness. The untried troops were hurled at once into the thick of the fight and suffered fearful loss, and henceforth were almost continually engaged with the enemy till the fall of Richmond. Besides these seventeen regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, the State furnished for the defense of the Union three light batteries and three companies of sharpshooters, who well sustained the ancient renown of the marksmen whom Stark and Warner led, and at the close of the war Vermont stood credited with nearly thirty-four thousand men. Thus unstintingly did she devote her strength to the preservation of the Union to which she had been so reluctantly admitted. What manner of men they were, Sheridan testified when, two years after the war, standing beneath their tattered banners in Representatives' Hall at Montpelier, he said: "I have never commanded troops in whom I had more confidence than I had in the Vermont troops, and I do not know but I can say that I never commanded troops in whom I had as much confidence as those of this gallant State," and the torn and faded battle-flags under which he stood told more eloquently than words how bravely they had been borne through the peril of many battles, and honorably returned to the State that gave them. When, after four weary years, the war came to its successful close, the decimated regiments of Green Mountain Boys returned to their State, received a joyful but sad welcome, and then, with all the embattled host of Union volunteers, dissolved into the even, uneventful flow of ordinary life. Notwithstanding the remoteness of the State from the arena of war, Vermont suffered a rebel raid from a quarter whence of old her enemies had often come, though of right none should come now. A majority of the people of Canada were in warm sympathy with the rebellion, their government was indifferent, and the Dominion swarmed with disloyal Americans, who were continually plotting to aid their brethren at the front by covert attacks in the rear. The federal government was on its guard, but a blow fell suddenly at an unexpected point.