"During the shelling of the town on Sunday
previous [January 5], the people had left their
houses, food, furniture and all, which our troops
(some fording the river arms deep and others sent up
from below) had occupied and literally appropriated
to themselves. Food, furniture, forage, fuel and all
had been used and destroyed with out thought or
decency. Three of the regiments were new and had been
armed with Belgian [rifles] the day of the attack.
They knew nothing of camp, garrison, or other
military duty, and were literally a mob firing their
loaded muskets right and left and playing the very
devil generally.
"I did not wait to get my overcoat off before I
began a reform. I appointed a provost marshal and
gave him a guard as soon as my own brigade came up of
reliable men [and] ordered a report of the strength
of regiments, established a grand guard and outposts
four miles up and down the river, shut up the
groggeries, and filled up several respectable sized
rooms with arrested rowdies. Two of these regiments
had lost all their camp and garrison equipage and the
weather was cold to zero. Every particle of space in
the whole town was crowded. Retiring citizens from
the country rushed upon me with violent complaints of
robbery, plunder, destruction of all their edibles,
and with all the ten thousand complaints of a people
scared out of their homes at a moment's notice, which
a hungry and irresponsible soldiery had taken
possession of.
"To add to my tribulations up came my four
regiments, three of them without winter tents and the
ground so frozen that tents could not be pitched at
any rate. I hardly know now how I disposed of them --
some in barns outside, some in canal boats, and some
in bivouac. But the thing was done, and I went to my
blankets a tired and anxious man. I had at least 6000
men crowded into a little village, not 500 yards from
the opposite bank [of the river] held by the enemy in
force not less than 15,000 with twenty pieces of
artillery. It seemed but a stone's throw to the high
hills opposite, which looked down upon this town,
which is at the foot of the hills on our side."