Forage for
Baron Münchhausen’s Horses.
Report of Lieutenant K.F.I. von Münchhausen of Brunswick’s Cuirassier
Regiment to the chancellery of the governor-general of
Livonia.
16 February 1741. Riga.
On 29 January of this year, an order from His High Grafship and Serene High Commanding Lord General-Field Marshal and cavalier Reichsgraf de Lacy was received by the cuirassier companies stationed here in Riga. In the order was a copy from the War Collegium of His Imperial Majesty’s ukase regarding providing horses with forage. Namely: each day for a cuirassier horse 3 gartsa [10 1/2 quarts] of oats, the same amount of chopped straw, 16 funtov [14 1/3 pounds] of hay, and 12 sheaves of straw each month; baggage and non-combatant horses [pod”emnye i nestroevye loshadi]—2 gartsa [7 quarts] of oats in fifteen shares [po 2 gartsa s pyatoyu na desyat’ doleyu], 15 funtov [13 1/2 quarts] of hay, and 12 sheaves of straw each week. It is added that regimental and company commanders are to take strict care in this regard and make assiduous efforts to see that this forage is fully delivered to the horses.
Forage in accordance with His Imperial Majesty’s ukase of the referenced date has not been issued by the Riga magazine. Captain Linderstern of that magazine is not issuing it and explains that he has no order from that date regarding the issue of forage. He issues for each day: for a cuirassier horse—2 1/3 gartsa of oats, 2 gartsa of chopped straw, 13 1/3 funtov [12 pounds] of hay, plus 5 sheaves of straw each month; for baggage and noncombatant horses—2 gartsa of oats, 12 [10 3/4 pounds] funtov of hay, plus 12 sheaves of straw each week. The horses cannot be satisfied with that amount of forage, and due to the shortage of forage some have come to be badly treated, which has been reported to the higher command previously. So we are happy for His Imperial Majesty’s ukase ordering the sufficient issue of fodder as written above, and with such forage the horses would be immediately brought to good condition and always bee in a good state.
Therefore we would be pleased to humbly ask the chancellery of the Livonia governor-general to send an order to Captain Linderstern based on His Imperial Majesty’s ukase regarding the issue of additional forage to the horses of the two companies of the Leib and Brunswick’s Cuirassier Regiments stationed in Riga.
Lieutenant v.
Münchhausen
Submitted by A. Kapitonov.
[ILLUSTRATIONS, page 8:]
Page 8, top: Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronim von Münchhausen (1720-1797). Photograph from the G. Bruckner’s original portrait of 1752. The picture was kept in the family by the celebrated baron’s descendents but destroyed in the Second World War. The baron is depicted in the uniform of an officer of His Imperial Highness the Sovereign Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich’s Cuirassier Regiment.
Page 8, bottom: Officer and private of cuirassier regiments, 1732-1742. Colored lithograph by an unknown artist of the 1840’s. (Istoricheskoe opisanie… Part II, No. 272. VIMAIViVS.)
Translated by Mark Conrad, 2002.