Note 247 — Chapter I

Pollock was afraid that Nott would have commenced his retreat before the receipt of the despatch of July 4. “My movement will of course depend,” he wrote in a confidential letter to Mr. Robertson on the 10th of August, “on General Nott’s ability to meet me. Our late accounts from that quarter are not favourable. They say that General Nott is bent on retiring, and I very much fear that he will have made several marches to the rear before the government despatch can reach him.... I ought by this time to have heard from General Nott, in reply to my letter by the first of the five messengers. If he is not coming on, my negotiations for the prisoners will be a very simple affair; but it must ever be a subject of regret that he should so hastily retire, and at such a time, while he commands an army in every respect efficient, and amounting to about 15,000 men.”—[MS. Correspondence.]