[243] the rear of the enemy, reaches the hill which Jordan has not been able or is unwilling to occupy in advance of them. Leaving a portion of his forces in this position, he advances with the remainder against the small Federal band, reduced to about twelve hundred men, which, being pressed on other sides, has gained the summit of the ravine in the hope of forcing a passage toward the north. This time the Unionists are hemmed in. Coburn determines to make a desperate bayonet-charge upon the enemy in front of him, but Forrest, arriving in the midst of these valiant soldiers, who have not even a cartridge left to defend themselves with, prevents him. All further struggle is impossible. Coburn surrenders with all those who have not forsaken him. A few shots from King's battery still fall among the compact group of soldiers of both parties who have ceased fighting. Finally, the firing stops. Forrest at once sends forth his mounted men in pursuit of Jordan and those who had followed him, but they cannot be overtaken: Coburn's resistance has saved them by giving them the necessary start to reach Franklin, where they will carry the news of his disaster. The conflict has lasted for nearly seven hours. It is four o'clock in the afternoon. The Federal prisoners, numbering about thirteen hundred able-bodied men, speedily conveyed to Shelbyville, suffered much on that march, but the Confederate officers, who admired their courage, treated them with a degree of consideration which was not meted out to them afterward in the gloomy prisons of Richmond. The Confederate losses amounted to thirty killed and one hundred and twenty-five wounded. Those of the Unionists were in the neighborhood of three hundred.
The battle of Thompson's Station demonstrated what a numerous and well-handled cavalry can do against infantry when the latter comes in contact with it. If Forrest's soldiers, who fought so well on foot, had not been mounted, they would not have had time to surround their adversaries. This general, some of whose actions we have been obliged to denounce, as also his too-frequently manifested contempt for the usages of civilized nations, on that occasion exhibited the instinct of a true warrior.
The fatal result of Coburn's expedition seems to have produced the same effect upon Rosecrans that the disaster of Ball's Bluff
