oss than befell the
world-renowned British infantry on the day that saw the doom of the
mighty French Emperor. The defeated Confederates at Gettysburg lost
relatively as many men as the defeated French at Waterloo; but whereas
the French army became a mere rabble, Lee withdrew his formidable
soldiery with their courage unbroken, and their fighting power only
diminished by their actual losses in the field.

The decisive moment of the battle, and perhaps of the whole war, was in
the afternoon of the third day, when Lee sent forward his choicest
troops in a last effort to break the middle of the Union line. The
kernel of the attacking force was Pickett's division, the flower of the
Virginian infantry, but many other brigades took part in the assault,
and the attacking column, all told, numbered over fifteen thousand men.
At the same time Longstreet's Confederate forces attacked the Union left
to create a diversion. The attack was preceded by a terrific cannonade,
Lee gathering one hundred and fifteen guns, and opening a terrible fire
on the centre of the Union line. In response, the Union chief of
artillery gathered eighty guns along on the crest of the gently sloping
hill where attack was threatened. For two hours, from one to three,
there was a terrific cannonade, and the batteries on both sides suffered
severely. In both the Union and Confederate lines caissons were blown up
by the fire, riderless horses dashed hither and thither, the dead lay in
heaps, and throngs of wounded streamed to the rear. Every man lay down
and sought what cover he could. It was evident that the Confederate
cannonade was but a prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three
o'clock Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, ordered the fire to stop,
that the guns might cool to be ready for the coming assault. The
Confederates thought that they had silenced the Union artillery, and for
a few minutes their firing continued; then suddenly it ceased, and there
was a lull.

The men on the Union side who were not at the point directly menaced
peered anxiously across the space between the lines to watch the next
move, while the men in the divisions which it was certain were about to
be assaulted lay hugging the ground and gripping their muskets, excited,
but confident and resolute. They saw the smoke clouds rise slowly above
the opposite crest, where the Confederate army lay, and the sunlight
glinted again on the long line of brass and iron guns which had