III.

THE BATTLE OF THE 6TH OF MAY.

The morning of the 6th of May came, and, with the first light of dawn, the adversaries, as by a common understanding, advanced at the same moment to attack each other.

The battle which followed is wellnigh indescribable, and may be said, in general terms, to have been naught but the blind and desperate clutch of two great bodies of men, who could scarcely see each other when they were but a few feet apart, and who fired at random, rather by sound than sight.  A Southern writer, describing the country and the strange combat, says:  “The country was sombre—­a land of thicket, undergrowth, jungle, ooze, where men could not see each other twenty yards off, and assaults had to be made by the compass.  The fights there were not even as easy as night attacks in open country, for at night you can travel by the stars.  Death came unseen; regiments stumbled on each other, and sent swift destruction into each other’s ranks, guided by the crackling of the bushes.  It was not war—­military manoeuvring:  science had as little to do with it as sight.  Two wild animals were hunting each other; when they heard each other’s steps, they sprung and grappled.  The conqueror advanced, or went elsewhere.  The dead were lost from all eyes in the thicket.  The curious spectacle was here presented of officers advancing to the charge, in the jungle, compass in hand, attacking, not by sight, but by the bearing of the needle.  In this mournful and desolate thicket did the great campaign of 1864 begin.  Here, in blind wrestle as at midnight, did two hundred thousand men in blue and gray clutch each other—­bloodiest and weirdest of encounters.  War had had nothing like it.  The genius of destruction, tired apparently of the old commonplace killing, had invented the ‘unseen death.’  At five in the morning, the opponents closed in, breast to breast, in the thicket.  Each had thrown up here and there slight, temporary breastworks of saplings and dirt; beyond this, they were unprotected.  The question now was, which would succeed in driving his adversary from these defences, almost within a few yards of each other, and from behind which crackled the musketry.  Never was sight more curious.  On the low line of these works, dimly seen in the thicket, rested the muzzles spouting flame; from the depths rose cheers; charges were made and repulsed, the lines scarcely seeing each other; men fell and writhed, and died unseen—­their bodies lost in the bushes, their death-groans drowned in the steady, continuous, never-ceasing crash.”