During the second phase of the battle, an American musket ball killed Cornwallis’ horse, preventing the British general from coordinating the attack on the Continental third line. Without central direction, the officers of British units attacked in a piecemeal fashion. The Continental regulars repulsed some of those assaults, but a re-mounted Cornwallis soon brought up reinforcements and drove back the entire Continental line with salvoes of grapeshot. Greene ordered a general withdrawal to preserve his army, though his artilleryman had to leave their 6-pounder guns on the battlefield because all of their horses had been wounded or killed. Tarleton’s Legion and some of Cornwallis’ Highlander infantry attempted to pursue Greene’s retreating army, but the disciplined regulars from the Virginia Continental brigade held them in check. Greene’s main army successfully broke contact and marched unmolested towards their wagon trains at Speedwell Ironworks.
"Colonel Washington's Light Infantry on the right flank was attacked by three British regiments, in which they behaved with almost incredible bravery, obliging the enemy to retreat in three different attacks, the last of which they pursued them up a very steep hill, almost inaccessible, till observing the enemy, who lay concealed in an ambush, rise up, and pouring in a heavy fire on the them, in which they were obliged to retreat, having very much by the last fire of the enemy."
SGM William Seymour, 1st Maryland-Delaware regimentWilliam Seymour, “Journal of the Southern Expedition,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History, 8 (1883): 378.