About 4 PM on October 8, Colonel Samuel Powell was ordered to move his brigade westward from Perryville to learn how many Federal troops were stationed there, but his 1,000-man force advancing along the Springfield Pike ran into the 22,000 men of Acting Major General Charles C. Gilbert’s III Corps. Gilbert’s command, idle for most of the day, reacted forcefully and drove Powell’s men back into Perryville, pursued by Colonel William P. Carlin’s brigade of Brigadier General Robert B. Mitchell’s 9th Division. As the Confederates sought safety by retiring across the Chaplin River, Brigadier General Preston Smith’s brigade hurried forward to cover Powell’s withdrawal. Carlin placed four cannon of the 2nd Minnesota Battery on a ridge overlooking town, and the Federal guns shelled Confederate troops trying to cross by the covered Second Street Bridge or the causeway at Third Street. Confederate batteries on the heights east of town answered, and artillery fire fell across Perryville, severely damaging several structures and setting some buildings near the two bridges ablaze. Federal infantry led by the 21st Illinois then moved into town, securing its western part while the Confederates retired eastward; one private in the 1st Arkansas remembered a terrible assault from behind the houses. Although Mitchell wanted to occupy Perryville with more troops, Gilbert, fearing a trap because Federal leaders believed Bragg had more men on the field, ordered the 9th Division to hold back. The opportunity passed, Carlin withdrew most of his men to Perryville’s western outskirts, and firing continued into the night, when fifteen Confederate ammunition wagons and sixty-eight men were captured. This action ended the Battle of Perryville.