Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

In fact, everything showed the moral effect of these successes on the enemy. Sheridan not only found hundreds of rebel wounded scattered in the houses as he advanced, and wagons and caissons burned or abandoned by Early in his flight; but he captured many unhurt soldiers, hiding in the forests or making their way to their homes. The rebel commander himself described his condition very graphically to Lee: ‘My troops are very much shattered, the men very much exhausted, and many of them without shoes. . . I shall do the best I can, and hope I may be able to check the enemy, but I cannot but be apprehensive of the result.’ ‘In the affair at Fisher's Hill the cavalry gave way, but it was flanked. This would have been remedied, if the troops had remained steady; but a panic seized them at the idea of being flanked, and without being defeated, they broke, many of them fleeing shamefully. The artillery was not captured by the enemy, but abandoned by the infantry.’¹ Lee fully appreciated the disasters of his subordinate. ‘I very much regret,’ he said, ‘the reverses that have occurred in the Valley. . . You must do all in your power to invigorate your army. . . It will require the greatest watchfulness, the greatest promptness, and the most untiring energy on your part to arrest the progress of the enemy in their present tide of success.’ These orders were themselves an implied rebuke, but more direct censure was not spared. Lee added words which coming