But there was no time now to reconnoiter the ground. What was left of the battalion had to be shown where to bivouac, then a working party had to go to the springhouse of the nearby farm to find water. A few stragglers limped in and a handful of others arrived on wagons that had been sent back down the road to collect the weary. Starbuck ordered a sullen Captain Dennison down to the town to find any other stragglers and direct them up to the high ground.

Swynyard summoned his battalion commanders to the small graveyard. He showed them where the brigade’s small reserve store of ammunition was being stored, then walked the officers eastward to the rebel gunline, which overlooked the deep, wooded valley of the creek. Lee had evidently decided against defending the creek’s bank, but would instead let the Northern army cross the water and then climb the steep slope into the face of his guns, rifles, and muskets. “With God’s help, gentlemen,” Swynyard said, “we shoot them down here.”

It was an open stretch of fields, a place where men would stand in the smoke and trade volleys with a horde of Yankees coming up from the woods. Maitland had his expensive field glasses trained across the valley to a plowed field where a battery of Northern guns was being sited. “Parrott guns, by the look of them,” he said, “and aimed right at us.”

“Near on two miles away,” John Miles, the commander of the small 13th Florida regiment opined. “Maybe the sons of bitches will lose us in the smoke.”

“Hell, they’ll fire at the smoke,” Haxall, the Arkansas man, observed.

“Our guns will deal with them,” Swynyard said, cutting the pessimism short.

Maitland had turned his attention to the group of farm buildings that stood below the graveyard on the rebel held slope. “Can we turn that farm into a fortress?” he asked Swynyard. “Our Hougoumont,” he added.

“Our what?” Haxall asked.

“The chateâu of Hougoumont,” Maitland answered with his insufferable air of superiority. “A fortified farm that Wellington held all day against Napoleon’s men. At Waterloo,” he added condescendingly.

“He also fortified the farm at Mont St. Jean,” Swynyard said, unexpectedly trumping Maitland’s knowledge of military history, “and he lost it because the French surrounded it and the poor men inside ran out of ammunition. And tomorrow the Yankees will be all round that farm. It’s too far forward.”

“So we just ignore it?” Maitland asked, reluctant to give up the thought of a solid stone wall between himself and the Yankee rifles.

“Yankees won’t ignore it,” Starbuck put in. “They’ll fill the place with sharpshooters.”

“So we burn it,” Swynyard decided. “Miles? Your men can fire the buildings tonight?”

“Reckon they’d enjoy that, Colonel.”

“Then do it,” Swynyard said, then briefly sketched the brigade’s dispositions. The big Virginia regiment would hold the right of the brigade line, then would come the smaller units from Florida and Arkansas, with Maitland’s men of the Faulconer Legion on the left. “You’re in reserve, Nate,” Swynyard told Starbuck. “Keep your men in the woods. That might give them some cover from the Yankee guns.”