"H. Beam Piper - Rebel Raider" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

As before, he scattered his men over the countryside, quartering them on the people. This time, before
scattering them, he told them to meet him at Zion Church, just beyond the gap at Aldie, on the night of
the 28th. During the intervening ten days, he was not only busy gathering information but also in an
intensive recruiting campaign among the people of upper Fauquier and lower Loudoun Counties.




In this last, his best selling-point was a recent act of the Confederate States Congress called the Scott
Partisan Ranger Law. This piece of legislation was, in effect, an extension of the principles of prize law
and privateering to land warfare. It authorized the formation of independent cavalry companies, to be
considered part of the armed forces of the Confederacy, their members to serve without pay and mount
themselves, in return for which they were to be entitled to keep any spoil of war captured from the
enemy. The terms "enemy" and "spoil of war" were defined so liberally as to cover almost anything not
the property of the government or citizens of the Confederacy. There were provisions, also, entitling
partisan companies to draw on the Confederate government for arms and ammunition and permitting
them to turn in and receive payment for any spoil which they did not wish to keep for themselves.

The law had met with considerable opposition from the Confederate military authorities, who claimed that
it would attract men and horses away from the regular service and into ineffective freebooting. There is
no doubt that a number of independent companies organized under the Scott Law accomplished nothing
of military value. Some degenerated into mere bandit gangs, full of deserters from both sides, and terrible
only to the unfortunate Confederate citizens living within their range of operations. On the other hand, as
Mosby was to demonstrate, a properly employed partisan company could be of considerable use.

It was the provision about booty, however, which appealed to Mosby. As he intended operating in the
Union rear, where the richest plunder could be found, he hoped that the prospect would attract numerous
recruits. The countryside contained many men capable of bearing arms who had remained at home to
look after their farms but who would be more than willing to ride with him now and then in hope of
securing a new horse for farm work, or some needed harness, or food and blankets for their families. The
regular Mosby Men called them the "Conglomerates," and Mosby himself once said that they resembled
the Democrat party, being "held together only by the cohesive power of public plunder."

Mosby's first operation with his new force was in the pattern of the other twoтАФthe stealthy dismounted
approach and sudden surprise of an isolated picket post. He brought back eleven prisoners and twelve
horses and sets of small arms, and, as on the night of the 10th, left one wounded enemy behind. As on
the previous occasions, the prisoners were taken as far as Middleburg before being released on parole.

For this reason, Mosby was sure that Colonel Sir Percy Wyndham, commander of the brigade which
included the Fifth New York, Eighteenth Pennsylvania and the First Vermont, would assume that this
village was the raiders' headquarters. Colonel Wyndham, a European-trained soldier, would scarcely
conceive of any military force, however small, without a regular headquarters and a fixed camp.
Therefore, Wyndham would come looking for him at Middleburg. So, with a companion named Fountain
Beattie, Mosby put up for what remained of the night at the home of a Mr. Lorman Chancellor, on the
road from Aldie a few miles east of Middleburg. The rest of the company were ordered to stay outside
Middleburg.

Mosby's estimate of his opponent was uncannily accurate. The next morning, about daybreak, he and
Beattie were wakened by one of the Chancellor servants and warned that a large body of Union cavalry
was approaching up the road from Aldie. Peering through the window shutters, they watched about 200