ys the battle
raged. No other battle of recent time has been so obstinate and so
bloody. The victorious Union army lost a greater percentage in killed
and wounded than the allied armies of England, Germany, and the
Netherlands lost at Waterloo. Four of its seven corps suffered each a
greater relative loss than befell the world-renowned British infantry
on the day that saw the doom of the 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
center of the attacking force was Pickett's division, the flower of the
Virginia infantry; but many other brigades took part in the assault, and
the column, all told, numbered over fifteen thousand men. At the same
time, the Confederates 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 fire on the center of the Union
line. In response, Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, and Tyler, of
the artillery reserves, gathered eighty guns on the crest of the gently
sloping hill, where attack was threatened. For two hours, from one till
three, the cannonade lasted, 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 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 hostile 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 assa