(“Batalionnaya Devka v Pokhode,” in Russkaya Starina, Vol. 142, 1910, 2/66.)

In 1812 the St.-Petersburg Internal Provincial Battalion, from which the 198th Alexander Nevsky Reserve Infantry Regiment originates, was used to reinforce the St.-Petersburg Mass Levy [Opolchenie] and with it was in Wittgenstein’s corps in the October battles around Polotsk. It then joined the forces blockading Danzig.

The document presented below comes from this foreign campaign and is taken from the St-Petersburg Battalion's correspondence journal. It appears that the girl returned to Russia with the battalion. Her name was Avdot’ya Stepanova and was a native of Vitebsk Province. She happened to be in Germany, having gotten there with the supply train of the Mogilev Regiment, and was picked up by the train of the St.-Peterburg Mass Levy’s second battalion [druzhina]. Upon arriving at St. Petersburg, Stepanova was without means or purpose, and it was regarding her that the battalion commander wrote to the St.-Petersburg provincial administration:

Correspondence of the commander of the St.-Petersburg Internal Provincial Battalion to the St.-Petersburg provincial administration, 9 July 1814. No. 1332.

Captain Petrovskii of my battalion, upon returning from campaign and accompanying the people’s mass levy of St. Petersburg, reported to me the presence of a girl, Avdot’ya Stepanova, of Vitebsk Province, Dünaburg District, village of Galechva, of unknown age. He wrote that when the enemy invaded Russia, she, Stepanova, asked Lieutenant Kobylinskii, at the time passing by her village with the supply train of the Mogilev Infantry Regiment, to take her with him, solely in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy. Kobylinskii agreed and took her with him, eventually bringing her past Berlin to the town of Schweitz, where circumstances forced him to leave her. But when the train of the St.-Petersburg Mass Levy’s second battalion passed by that town, with it was Private Kondratii Isaev of my battalion, and when she, Stepanova, learned of the train’s passage, she asked Isaev to take her with him, to which the private agreed, and he brought her along. Upon arriving here in St. Petersburg, when all personnel were delivered to my battalion, the said Isaev presented the girl Stepanova to his company commander, Captain Petrovskii, and he, as I wrote above, presented her to me. Since she, Stepanova, has no documentation of any kind with her, I pass her along to the provincial authorities.