The mist over Hampton Roads clung low and heavy, muffling sound and sight alike.
On the night of June 9th, 1861, two Union columns—three thousand five hundred men in total—moved silently down the rutted Virginia roads, their boots squelching in marshy soil.
Officers whispered strict orders: no pipes, no calls, no songs.
Dawn would bring surprise, and surprise alone might give them victory.
Their destination was Little Bethel, a modest crossroads where a Confederate encampment had taken root.
Scouts reported militia, perhaps a thousand strong.
What they did not know, what no Federal officer could guess, was that the Greyback riflemen had once again slipped unseen into the ranks of the South.
Elias had reinforced the defenders with another thousand of his strange legion, and together they had spent the past week digging, training, and waiting.
The Union men marched hard, through swamp and pine woods, their columns threading past each other in the dark.
But even the best-laid plans falter at the hands of fortune.
Shortly before dawn, one brigade mistook another for the enemy.
Muskets fired.
Shouts erupted.
Confusion bled down the line, undoing hours of careful silence.
The alarm carried on the damp wind, and in the camp at Little Bethel, Confederate pickets stirred.
Captain Rex (^_^) stood at the edge of the Greyback trench line when the first panicked Union shots echoed across the distance.
He did not smile, but his eyes hardened.
"They come unready,"
he murmured.
Through the System he sent word:
Enemy approaches in disorder.
Strength: superior.
Intent: dawn assault.
We are prepared.
His men—Elias's men—had lain awake in their pits, rifles balanced across their knees, eyes fixed upon the treeline.
To the volunteers beside them, they were nothing more than taciturn foreign regulars, unnervingly calm.
But as the first glint of grey emerged through the lifting fog, the Greybacks rose in unison, every rifle leveled.
The Union columns, still untangling themselves from their own misfire, stumbled forward without the cohesion expected of seasoned troops.
Their officers shouted, waving swords to rally the ranks.
Bayonets lowered.
The first Federal volley cracked the morning stillness.
But the reply was sharper, heavier, more disciplined.
A wall of smoke and flame tore from the Confederate ridge.
Union skirmishers reeled back.
A second volley struck before they could recover.
The defenders were not the raw militia the Federals had been promised—they fired with the precision of trained armies, each line discharging and reloading with uncanny rhythm.
"Hold steady! They are but rabble!"
cried Colonel Duryea of the Union Zouaves, but even his bravado faltered when the next wave of musketry scythed down his men as though they had marched into the maw of artillery.
The battle unfolded in bitter fragments.
Union batteries unlimbered, their guns thundering into the ridge, splintering trees and gouging trenches.
Yet the defenders held, their volleys never slackening.
Smoke thickened until daylight itself seemed strangled.
Men fired into shadows, hearing screams but seeing little.
At the Confederate center, Rex strode behind the line, directing fire with clipped commands.
"Aim low. Fire by rank. Again."
His coat was flecked with mud and powder, his eyes distant, as if seeing more than the battle itself.
To his left, the Virginia militia faltered.
Cannon shot had torn gaps through their earthworks, and some wavered toward the rear.
Greybacks moved wordlessly into the breaches, their muskets never ceasing.
To the eyes of the Virginians, it was as though Providence itself supplied endless stalwarts who refused to bend.
By midmorning, Union brigades surged again.
The Zouaves charged up the slope with wild cries, red pantaloons flashing in the smoke.
For a moment, it seemed they might break through.
Bayonets clashed.
Muskets swung like clubs.
Yet the Greybacks locked shields, fighting with a ferocity beyond mortal fatigue.
Rex led a counter-thrust, steel bayonet flashing, and the Zouaves wavered, then broke, tumbling back down the hill.
The fields before Little Bethel became a mire of blood and rainwater.
Wounded men cried out for surgeons who never came.
Horses thrashed where they had fallen.
The acrid reek of black powder mingled with the copper tang of blood.
Union commanders tried once more to rally their strength for a final push.
Colonel Abram urged his regiments forward, cursing the fog, the mud, the stubborn resistance.
Yet by then the men themselves had lost faith.
Each advance ended the same way: volleys slamming into them with machine-like precision, the defenders never yielding.
By afternoon, realization dawned grimly upon the Federals.
Numbers alone could not pry open the ridge.
Exhaustion and mounting losses weighed heavier than their commands.
At last, the bugle of retreat sounded, ragged and reluctant.
The battlefield quieted only gradually.
Union troops fell back in uneven columns, dragging the wounded, leaving behind shattered wagons and bloodied banners.
The defenders did not pursue far.
They had no need—the field itself proclaimed victory.
Among the Confederates, jubilation mixed with disbelief.
A thousand Virginia volunteers, alongside Elias's thousand, had held off twice their number.
Campfires that night burned bright, songs rising in defiance of the day's slaughter.
The cost, however, was not small.
Confederate dead numbered only a single death, with a handful of wounded.
Among Elias's legion, they suffered not a single wound let along a death.
Union casualties were greater—nearly six hundred dead, a thousand more wounded or captured in their failed offensive.
It was not the disaster of Philippi, but it was enough to sting, enough to remind Washington that Virginia would not be taken quickly.
That night, Rex sent in his report in the stillness of a commandeered farmhouse.
Little Bethel held.
Enemy repulsed despite double strength.
Our line unbroken.
Southern spirit emboldened.
Casualties not sustained.
Union advance into Virginia checked for the season.
The message sped across the unseen tether, reaching Elias half a world away.
He read it in silence, then closed his eyes.
Two victories, back to back.
Each a spark in the tinderbox of rebellion.
Each a test his hidden legion had passed.
If Philippi had been the spark, then Little Bethel was the breath of wind that carried the flame further.
Virginia would hold—for now.
And the Union, once so confident, found itself bloodied again, its great march into the South halted before it had truly begun.
The war stretched out ahead, longer and darker than either side had yet imagined.
But in the quiet corners of Europe, Elias smiled at last. The experiment was working.