It was noon before the enemy essayed any vigorous attack, but then began a series of swift and furious assaults, continuing at intervals far into the evening — from
Martindale on the right, from
Hancock and
Burnside in the centre, from
Warren on the left; but though their men advanced with spirit, cheering and at the run, and their officers displayed an astonishing hardihood, several of them rushing up to within thirty yards of the adverse works, bearing the colors, yet the huge columns, rent by the plunging fire of the light guns, and smitten with a tempest of bullets, recoiled in confusion, and finally fled, leaving their dead and dying on the field along the whole front.
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272]
The men of
Anderson's and
Hill's corps were now pouring into the
Confederate works, division after division, battery after battery, and when night fell, those two grim adversaries, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, again confronted each other in array of battle, while
General Grant had learned that
Petersburg, as
Napoleon said of
Valencia,
