After capturing the Coaling and the Union cannons there, Confederate troops struggled to hold the position as Union commander Gen. Erastus Tyler assembled a counterattack from multiple directions. The 66th Ohio charged up the slope, while the 5th Ohio and 7th Ohio broke off fighting on the river plain and surged toward the height, as Union artillery on lower ground blasted the Louisianians with canister. Caught by surprise and reduced to an unorganized mass around the captured guns, the Confederates feared they could not keep the height and began killing the artillery horses so the Federals could not pull the cannons away; more than 50 horses were slaughtered. Federal troops swarmed onto the height and savage fighting erupted, with the Confederates falling back, reforming, and charging again. Union artillerymen fired their revolvers until their ammunition was gone and then hurled rocks, while men on both sides shot, stabbed, hacked, and grappled beneath the cannon in repeated counterattacks. The Federals were forced back, then attacked again, and the Confederates were driven from the Coaling once more before southern reinforcements approached.