rning of the 9th, pushing
slowly up river, impeded by low water. Feeling assured that intelligence
of Banks's defeat would send the fleet back to Grand Ecore, and hoping
to cut off its communication, at dawn of the 11th I sent General Bagby,
with a brigade of horse and a battery, from Mansfield to Grand Bayou
Landing. Before reaching the ferry at Bayou Pierre, he ascertained that
the fleet had turned back on the afternoon of the 10th. There was a
pontoon train at Shreveport that I had in vain asked for, and Bagby
experienced great delay in crossing Bayou Pierre by means of one small
flat. The fleet, descending, passed Grand Bayou Landing at 10 o'clock
A.M. of the 11th, some hours before Bagby reached the river; and he
pushed on toward Blair's Landing, where he arrived on the night of the
12th, after the close of Green's operations of that day.

General Green, from Pleasant Hill, had been directing the movements of
our advanced horse, a part of which, under Bee, was in front of Grand
Ecore and Natchitoches. Advised of the movements of the enemy's fleet,
he, with seven hundred and fifty horse and two batteries, left Pleasant
Hill for Blair's Landing at 6 o'clock P.M. on the 11th. As in the case
of Bagby, he was delayed at Bayou Pierre, and, after hard work, only
succeeded in crossing three guns and a part of his horse before the
fleet came down on the 12th. Green attacked at once, and leading his men
in his accustomed fearless way, was killed by a discharge of grape from
one of the gunboats. Deprived of their leader, the men soon fell back,
and the fleet reached Grand Ecore without further molestation from the
west bank. The enemy's loss, supposed by our people to have been
immense, was officially reported at seven on the gunboats and fifty on
the transports. _Per contra_, the enemy believed that our loss was
stupendous; whereas we had scarcely a casualty except the death of
General Green, an irreparable one. No Confederate went aboard the fleet
and no Federal came ashore; so there was a fine field of slaughter in
which the imagination of both sides could disport itself.

With facilities for crossing the Pierre at hand, the fleet, during the
11th and 12th, would have been under the fire of two thousand riflemen
and eighteen guns and suffered heavily, especially the transports,
crowded with troops. As it was, we accomplished but little and lost
General Green.

Like Mouton, this officer had joined me at an early period of