For several crucial hours Bennigsen could not be found; he had personally ridden to L'Estocq to urge that general to hasten the march of his Prussian corps to the battlefield. His mission was successful; L'Estocq's 9,000-man Prussian force, having lost a third of its strength to Ney's pursuit, approached the battlefield via the Russian right and passed completely behind the Russian position to its left wing, gathering strength in doing so by collecting Russian stragglers and adding them to the 6,000 remaining Prussian troops. At 16:00 L'Estocq counterattacked by falling on Davout's exposed right flank, and the heartened Russians soon launched a fresh attack against Davout. Over the next three hours Davout was halted and forced back to a line running from the village of Kutschitten to near the village of Anklappen towards Saint-Hilaire's right by Eylau. Davout, alert to the danger, formed a battery of his guns on the heights of Klein Sausgarten and personally rallied his troops while his guns drove the Prussians back into the woods. With nightfall exhaustion set in and fighting on the Russian left petered out.