Note 37 — Front matter (continued 2)

Admirable as was the conduct of all our artillery, every man in which deserved a decoration, yet among this artillery, the battery of colonel Pientka must be distinguished. Without yielding a step of ground, that battery held its place for five hours, and it often happened during the battle, that this single battery was left exposed alone to the fire of thirty or forty of the enemy's pieces. It was computed that this battery alone caused a greater loss to the enemy than the entire loss that his whole artillery caused in our ranks; and I do not exaggerate in saying, that the fire, chiefly of grape, which Pientka kept up for five hours, and at the distance often of a few hundred paces only, must have cost the Russians from one to two thousand men. What is most remarkable, this battery itself, during the whole of the fire, did not lose more than one officer and six men killed, six wounded, and ten or twelve horses, two of which were killed under colonel Pientka, whose clothes were pierced through and through with grape, and his casque torn in pieces, while, as if providentially preserved, his person was not in the slightest degree injured.