By dawn the next morning, at all events, Banks calculated, the turning column would be in place; accordingly during the night he gave orders to assault along the whole front as soon as it should be light enough to see.
However, shortly after midnight, sounds were heard on the picket line, indicating some unusual movement behind the Confederate works. When, at daybreak, the various skirmishers moved forward in eager rivalry, they found the Confederates gone. Captain Allaire, leading his company of the 133d New York, was the first to enter the works; the regiment itself and the 8th New Hampshire followed closely, and the colors of the 8th were the first to mount the parapet, where they were planted by Paine. On the left bank, this honor fell to the 53d Massachusetts. But in truth the surge was so nearly simultaneous that the whole line of entrenchments on both sides of the bayou, from right to left, was crossed almost at the same instant.
It was nine o'clock on Monday night when Taylor learned of Grover's movements and position, as narrated in the next chapter. Taylor at once began to move out of the lines of Bisland and to direct his attention to Grover in order to secure a retreat. Just before daylight Green, to whom, with his 5th Texas, Waller's battalion, and West's section of Semmes's battery, Taylor had given the more than usually delicate task of covering the rear, marched off the ground, leaving nothing behind save one 24-pounder siege gun and a disabled howitzer of Cornay's battery.
Without losing an instant the pursuit of the retreating Confederates was begun, Weitzel leading the way, and was conducted with vigor and with scarcely a halt, notwithstanding the energetic opposition of the Confederate rear-guard, until early in the afternoon, just beyond Franklin, Emory's advance guard, under Paine, following the bayou road, ran into Grover's under Dwight, approaching from the opposite direction. Weitzel, having entered Franklin without opposition, kept the left-hand or cut-off road until he came to the burnt bridge over the Choupique, by which, as will presently be seen, the Confederates had escaped.
Gooding, after occupying the works in his front, crossed the Teche by a bridge to the west bank and fell into Emory's column behind Ingraham. The _Clifton_, as soon as the obstructions could be removed, got under way and moved up the bayou abreast with the advance of the army.