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been endured.
The defense was bravely kept up during the whole day, when
Price, finding his ammunition and his famished men
1 nearly exhausted, withdrew, at sunset, to the Fair-grounds, to await the arrival of his wagon-train and re-enforcements.
Mulligan's men immediately resorted to the trenches, to complete their preparations for a siege.
Mulligan now anxiously looked for expected re-enforcements, while his men worked night and day in strengthening the fortifications.
He was disappointed.
His courier, sent with supplications for aid to
Jefferson City, was captured on the way.
2 Hour after hour and day after day went by, and no relief appeared.
Yet bravely and hopefully his little band worked on, until, on the morning of the 17th,
General Price, who had been re-enforced, and now had in hand over twenty-five thousand troops, including a large number of recruits who had come with their rifles and shot-guns, cut off the communication of the besieged with the city, upon which they chiefly relied for water, and on the following day
took possession of the town, closed in upon the garrison, and began a siege in earnest.
The Confederates had already seized a steamboat well laden with stores for the
National troops; and, under every disadvantage, the latter conducted a most gallant defense.
General Rains's division occupied a strong position on the east and northeast of the fortifications, from which an effective cannonade was opened at nine o'clock, and kept up by
Bledsoe's Battery, commanded by
Captain Emmit McDonald, and another directed by
Captain C. Clark, of
St. Louis.
General Parsons took a position southwest of the works, from which his battery, under
Captain Guibor, poured a steady fire upon the garrison.
Near
Rains, the division of
Colonel Congreve Jackson was posted as a reserve; and near
Parsons, a part of
General Steen's division performed the same service, whilst sharpshooters were sent forward to harass and fatigue the be-leaguered troops, who were not allowed a moment's repose.
General Harris (who, as we have seen,
3 came down from
Northeastern Missouri and joined
Price at
Lexington) and
General McBride, scorning all rules of Christian warfare, stormed a bluff on which was situated the house of
Colonel Anderson, and then used as a hospital, capturing it with its inmates, while a yellow flag, the insignia of its character, was waving over it. It was retaken by the Montgomery Guards,
Captain Gleason, of the “Irish brigade,” eighty strong, who charged, in the face of the hot fire of the foe, a distance of eight hundred yards up a slope, driving the
Confederates from the building and far down the hill beyond.
The fight was desperate, and some of the sick were killed in their beds.
The Guards were finally repulsed.
Captain Gleason came back with a bullet through his cheek and another through his arm, and with only fifty of his eighty men. “This charge,” said
Colonel Mulligan, in his official report, “was one of the most brilliant and reckless in all history.”