Less than a month after the Confederates occupied Mill Springs, two Union armies began moving against them while most of the Confederate army was positioned across the river at Beech Grove. Their commanding general chose to strike the first Union force before the second could arrive. In cold, pouring rain just after midnight on January 19, 1862, the Confederates marched out of Beech Grove and found the Federals deployed on both sides of the Mill Springs road about two miles south of present-day Nancy. Part of the Confederate force deployed west of the road, while the rest moved east and followed a deep ravine to a position below the Union soldiers. The Confederates in the ravine repeatedly charged Federals holding a split-rail fence atop the hill, and neither side gained ground until a Union regiment west of the road launched a bayonet charge and got behind them. The Confederate lines collapsed and the army fled toward Beech Grove, then escaped that night to Mill Springs, leaving behind artillery, wagons, horses, and supplies. This battle became the first major Union victory of the Civil War, broke the eastern end of the Confederate defense line in Kentucky, and foreshadowed a series of Confederate defeats that continued after Shiloh in April, when Confederate forces withdrew to Mississippi and never recovered the lost ground.