By noon the next day, the Bagration Army encountered a large number of frozen Russian soldiers along the roadside during their march.
In less than half a day, they had collected over a thousand bodies.
These were prisoners previously released by Kosciuszko.
Within a hundred kilometers radius, there were no villages, and all the prisoners' food and blankets had been confiscated by the Polish Army. Without food, there was no way to generate heat, and they couldn't survive more than three days before freezing to death.
Originally, the Russian soldiers, having repelled the Poles, had begun to regain morale. However, upon seeing these half-naked corpses frozen from the extreme cold, they suddenly felt the cold seeping into their own bones, once again becoming pessimistic about the prospects of the war.
By the time they reached the upper reaches of the Iput River, a hundred kilometers away, they had already lost over 1,200 men due to the cold and disease.
