The night after the battle proved breezy and rain drizzled over the thousands of bodies lying in the open fields. That night the distraught Konovnitsyn listed losses in his private letter
Numerous are wounded and killed. Tuchkov is wounded in his chest, Alexander Tuchkov is killed […] Ushakov’s leg was torn off. Driezen is wounded, Richter as well […] My division is virtually non-existent [and] there is hardly a thousand men in it …523
Barclay de Tolly was shaken by his experiences: ‘I searched for death and did not find it,’ he told another general. Three horses had been shot from under him and still his life was spared. ‘My ardent wish to die did not come true,’ he wrote to Tsar Alexander. The troops remaining in the front line, although high in sprits, suffered from exhaustion and hunger. In the 1st Jäger Regiment, the officers ‘fell to the ground from exhaustion and hunger’. After a few minutes of this ‘half-dead condition’ as Petrov described it,
Our courageous and adroit Captain Tokarev […] stood up and asked our Colonel to leave the regiment for ten minutes to go to the battery that was deployed not far from us. The Colonel gave him permission and Tokarev, mounting his horse, galloped at once. A few minutes later he returned with a triumphant appearance and holding a small bundle in his hand. Jumping of the horse in front of us, he quickly opened it on the ground […] There was an indescribable treasure inside – five or six biscuits and two ordinary herrings […] ‘Gunners gave it to me.’ [Tokarev explained] ‘I told them, ‘Gentlemen! Spare something edible for the staff officers of the 1st Jäger Regiment, who are exhausted to death after the battle but still remain at their spot ahead of the entire army.’ And they gave me almost everything they had, including this …’ – he said as he revealed a flask filled with alcohol.
And so the three Russian officers shared this ‘magnificent’ meal on the banks of the Kolocha, remembering the experiences of the bloody day gone by.
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