Free Hell or Richmond by Ralph Peters Page B

Gordon may withdraw his brigade from the river. There will be no movement on our left by those people. He will rejoin General Early.” Something irked Lee, though. There was an admonition to add to the message. He took a step back toward Marshall. “You will stress to General Ewell that he is not to become engaged … not beyond any skirmishing forced upon him. I do not wish any part of this army to excite a battle, not until Longstreet is up. We will not have a repeat of Gettysburg.”
    Speaking that fateful name brought Lee up short. It would not do to single out Ewell for such an admonition, since Hill bore far more responsibility for stumbling into the meeting engagement that began that dreadful ordeal in Pennsylvania.
    “I wish the same counsel to go to General Hill,” Lee added. “He is not to become inextricably engaged. We will conduct ourselves with restraint until this army has closed up and we have chosen the ground on which to greet our visitors.”
    He had been thinking about a battleground not merely for hours, but for months. And still he found himself plagued with indecision and had to force himself to issue orders. It was essential to move quickly, to wrest control of developments from those people. They would be well into the tangles of the Wilderness this day, with at least one corps past it tomorrow and the remainder of their army strung out behind. If he caught an exposed portion of their force in there … taking them on the flank … it would deny the Federals use of their artillery, given the restricted fields of fire. Lee had learned at Malvern Hill, then doubly so at Gettysburg, to respect the Army of the Potomac’s guns. On the other hand, a major attack in that labyrinth would break down in a shambles, a brawl that would defy all attempts to control it. It had been a blessing that those people had not grasped how disordered Jackson’s men had been in the wake of their triumph the year before. No, the Wilderness would not be the place to fight a full-scale battle. Not without Jackson. But it had to be used gingerly to delay the Federals, to divert them from their purposes and help him regain the initiative.
    He saw it now. His opening gambit would be to surprise an isolated corps on terrain where skill trumped numbers, to play havoc with the strategy of his opponents, then disengage before they could bring the weight of their numbers to bear. He could threaten their lines of retreat to the fords, while Stuart embarrassed their trains. And he could always withdraw to the entrenchments along Mine Run, if things went awry.
    Still, he would take no irrevocable action until Longstreet brought up his corps. His men would need to march hard.
    As Marshall wrote out the orders on the little board he carried in his saddlebag, Lee turned his back decisively on the spectacle across the river.
    Speaking with more heat than usual, he said, “Colonel Marshall, you must stress to Generals Ewell and Hill that they are not to do more than reconnoiter carefully, not until I am present. Write forcefully, sir. We cannot afford to have a misunderstanding.”
    He would have to fight those people within days, but he did not mean to—could not afford to—rush into it headlong. For now, the cavalry could annoy their forward elements to delay them. But he needed more information to craft a plan in detail and bait the trap. He would refuse battle tomorrow, if he could. The day after that was a question mark.
    For all his concerns, his heart leapt at the prospect of fighting again. Lee smelled powder the way a horse smelled oats. There were things he dared not discuss with other men, matters he preferred not to think on too much himself. He loved war, that was the wicked truth. God forgive him, he loved it. Worse, this army had become his greatest love. It was a terrible thing for a man of faith, or any man, to recognize.
    When he told himself that he loved his wife, he found himself insisting that he still loved