| John Tulloch Nash

“ Now experience — and experience tends to instruct, and ripen men more than time — had taught us a valuable lesson in the preliminary tactics of rebel warfare; for we had learned that whenever they really meant to attack us, they invariably commenced the prelude to their operations with as much arrogant noise as possible ”

“ From our point of view, this body of mutineers seemed so small that, notwithstanding they were supported by a grim eighteen-pounder gun, a squadron of the Corps was deemed sufficient to dislodge, if not literally to annihilate them. Accordingly one hundred and twenty-two sabres, with the Colonel at their head, prepared to charge. ”

“ And now the left squadron, noticing their comrades hard pressed, also raced into the mêlée; and then the clanking of steel, the rattling of musketry, the yells of the mutineers — which might possibly have been heard a mile off — supplemented by a wild chaos of sabres, bayonets, revolvers, and muskets, all mingled in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter. No quarter was sought, nor offered. In fact, these blood-stained ferocious demons had apparently determined to fight out their cause (?) or die in the attempt ”

“ In an area of Heaven knows how many square yards, the killed and wounded lay crowded together as they had fallen; while some of the latter, having been blown off their horses when within a few yards of the muskets, with their “garments” — yes, reader, garments (for many of us, in contempt for dress, were fighting in shirt sleeves) — on fire, were unable to move; others fell and died without a groan; others, weltering in their blood, or bleeding to death, dragged themselves up into sitting postures, and with revolvers in hand watched the doubtfnl fight ”