Captain Richard Montjoy’s Company D experienced the Shenandoah Valley’s bone-chilling temperatures of mid-November as they cautiously rode northwest toward Winchester from Paris, Virginia, through Ashby’s Gap. The Rangers hit the backcountry trails most of the day. After concealing themselves in a wooded area one evening, the company set back on the Valley Pike at sunrise the following day, looking for trouble.
Montjoy received word that a group of Federal cavalry was “carelessly” trotting down the pike. The five-foot-eight former machinist ordered Company D to conceal themselves behind a barn and wait. Seconds ticked by. Montjoy had fearlessly led his men in battle many times—earning a rare accolade from Mosby: “one of the bravest of the brave.”1
When the Union cavalry reached the barn, a squad of Montjoy’s men revealed themselves and ordered the Federals to surrender.2 Sergeant Martin Schaffer resolutely refused to be taken alive. The Federal enlisted man commanded the seventeen-man detachment, coincidentally from the 17th Pennsylvania Cavalry. That morning he had orders to take dispatches to a nearby rail station. Only two weeks earlier, Schaffer had boldly escaped captivity by two Confederate guards. After his traumatic experience, Schaffer openly talked to his men about never being captured again. The Union sergeant vowed to go down fighting.
Ranger steeds thrust into the flank and rear of the Union cavalcade and disrupted the bluecoats. Montjoy’s men rapidly emptied the barrels of their Colts as an occasional double-barreled sawed-off shotgun thundered: the deadly weapon could tear apart flesh and bone and blow men off their horses at close range. Violent and swift, the Rangers’ charge once again proved decisive. Most of the Union troops quickly put spurs to their horses in an attempt to flee, but several men “bit the dust in the space of about one mile,”3 wrote Ranger J. Marshall Crawford. Montjoy’s men made short work of the seventeen-man party: seven were killed or wounded, including Sergeant Schaffer, who died of his wounds, and nine men were taken prisoner. One man, Martin Morgan Tyler, the detachment’s rear guard, escaped to tell the tale, and according to a report, “R.W. Moll, wounded, was shot after he had surrendered.”4
Following the ambush, Montjoy split his command. Rangers who boarded in Loudoun County made their way toward Castleman’s Ferry5 to return home. At the same time, the prisoners and the remainder of Company D headed toward Berry’s Ferry to cross the Shenandoah River and travel back to their lairs in Fauquier County. With a frigid wind nipping their faces, the Confederates and their prisoners rode down a long country lane in front of a mansion known as Clay Hill.6 The Confederates suddenly ran into over a dozen riders,7 cloaked in butternut.
Startled by the unexpected encounter with Blazer’s Jessie Scouts who moved ahead of the main column, the Confederates must have halted briefly, just enough time for Blazer’s men to get the bulge as they swarmed and charged Montjoy using the same tactics the Louisianan had employed hours earlier.
Montjoy tried to rally his fleeing men, but the Rangers skedaddled and fled toward the Shenandoah River and west as fast as their horses could carry them. Lieutenant Edward Bredell of St. Louis, who had joined Mosby and assumed the rank of private, lay dead in front of Clay Hill mansion. William Armstrong Braxton received a mortal wound8 but attempted to escape on his mount.
Under hot pursuit from Blazer’s men, with lead flying and the crack of pistol fire, the Rangers sped off to the southwest. At the Vineyard, home of the widow of Philip Pendleton Cooke, a poet, the two forces clashed again. The Vineyard was located a couple of miles from Millwood, Virginia, and took its name from a network of wild grapevines. The brick house was situated atop a commanding hill and overlooked a beautiful landscape.9 The Rangers and Scouts battled in the pastures around the estate.
Once again, Captain Montjoy and Lieutenant Charles E. Grogan, who “had little sense of fear and danger,”10 attempted to rally their men.
Grogan boasted an epic record. He first battled at Bull Run and later sustained wounds at Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg, where the Union captured him. They sent Grogan to Fort McHenry and later Johnson’s Island, located in Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio. An escape artist, Grogan absconded from the island by hiding in a barge filled with hay.11 From Ohio, Grogan somehow made his way to Mosby, likely walking and riding hundreds of miles from Ohio to Virginia.
Despite Grogan and Montjoy’s efforts, the Rangers broke and galloped headlong into the Shenandoah River with the Scouts on their tails. They plunged into the icy water and set out toward Burwell’s Island,12 a sandy area of land in the middle of the river. A young, Southern boy identified only as L.M.L. decades later described the action that followed: “A merry group of youngsters of which I was a member, were grazing and secreting from the Yankee army a very valuable lot of horses on Burwell’s Island [only hundreds of yards from the Vineyard] when suddenly Mosby’s battalion dashed into us, being hotly pursued by Captain Blazer.”13
As Blazer’s Scouts raced toward the Rangers onto the island and over to the eastern bank of the river, a running gun battle raged with “bullets flying as thick as gnats in August.” Fearing for his life, L.M.L. made “a dive for east side of the Shenandoah, eventually after being closely pursued I became frightened and jumped my steed and ran to the bushes; my horse wheeled and ran back to the enemy.”14
Montjoy escaped, only to be killed weeks later in another gun battle in Loudoun County. Blazer’s Scouts rounded up several prisoners during the chase and brought the mortally wounded Ranger William Armstrong Braxton into the Vineyard. The Scouts had battled with partisans for over a year but retained their spirit of humanity. “As [Braxton] lay on a sofa, Lieutenant Coles, [Blazer’s second], of Blazer’s command entered the house, and approaching the dying soldier, expressed commiseration for his condition, and offered such religious consolation as [he] could command.”15
When the dust settled on Burwell’s Island, “a deathlike sentence prevailed.”16
During the eerie silence, L.M.L.’s comrades brought forth “the lifeless body of a stately-looking gentleman, a stranger [Ranger Edward Bredell]. He was laid out at my uncle’s house; the night I shall never forget; the sad expression on his face, and how I felt for his loved ones at home. He was buried the next day on the bank of the river.”17