"
But the irregular organisation of the Valley forces proved a bar to
the fulfilment of Jackson's hopes. On approaching Newtown he found
that the pursuit had been arrested. Two pieces of artillery were
engaging a Federal battery posted beyond the village, but the
Confederate guns were almost wholly unsupported. Ashby had come up
with the convoy. A few rounds of shell had dispersed the escort. The
teamsters fled, and the supply waggons and sutlers' carts of the
Federal army, filled with luxuries, proved a temptation which the
half-starving Confederates were unable to resist. "Nearly the whole
of Ashby's cavalry and a part of the infantry under his command had
turned aside to pillage. Indeed the firing had not ceased, in the
first onset upon the Federal cavalry at Middletown, before some of
Ashby's men might have been seen, with a quickness more suitable to
horse-thieves than to soldiers, breaking from their ranks, seizing
each two or three of the captured horses and making off across the
fields. Nor did the men pause until they had carried their illegal
booty to their homes, which were, in some instances, at the distance
of one or two days' journey. That such extreme disorders could
occur," adds Dabney, "and that they could be passed over without a
bloody punishment, reveals the curious inefficiency of officers in
the Confederate army.
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