“They’re really farmers, not soldiers. Think of it, Colonel, as a peasants’ revolt.” James wondered if that was pitching it a bit strong, but anything that denigrated the rebels was music to James Starbuck’s ears, and so he not only let the insult stand, but embroidered it. “It is an army of ignorant farmboys led by immoral slave owners.”

“So victory is assured?” Lassan asked diffidently.

“Assured, guaranteed!” James felt the burgeoning happiness of a man who sees a difficult endeavor triumphantly concluded, and there was indeed a genuine elation of victory as yet more federal regiments crossed the stone bridge. Three northern divisions were crowding the road as they waited to cross the stream, a dozen bands were playing, women were cheering, the flags were flying, God was in his heaven, Beauregard’s flank was turned and the rebellion was being whipsawed into bloody shreds.

And it was still not even midday.

Fix Bayonets!" Major...

FIX BAYONETS!” MAJOR BIRD SHOUTED THE ORDER, THEN LISTENED AS it was echoed out toward the Legion’s flanks. The men pulled the heavy, brass-handled sword-bayonets from their scabbards and clicked them over their guns’ blackened muzzles. Most of the Legion had never believed they would use the bayonets in an infantry charge, instead, when the war was over and the Yankees had been sent back north, they had thought they would take the bayonets home and use them for pig sticking or hay cutting. Now, though, behind the thinning veil of smoke that hung above the scorched and shattered fence rails, they fixed the bayonets onto the fiercely hot rifle muzzles and tried not to think of what waited in the sunlight.

For a horde of Yankees waited out there—men from Rhode Island, New York and New Hampshire, their volunteer ardor reinforced by the professional fighters from the U.S. Army and Marines. The northern attackers now outnumbered Nathan Evans’s men by four to one, yet the Yankee attack had been held for more than an hour by the stubborn southern defense. Those defenders had now been whittled perilously thin and so Evans wanted one last effort to throw the northern attack into chaos and thus buy a few more minutes in which the remainder of the Confederate army could change its alignment to meet the flank attack. Evans would offer one last act of defiance before his rebel line disintegrated and the mighty northern assault rolled irresistibly on.