A few miles from Vilna the road to Kovno leads over a steep hill. The remains of the army trains and those from Vilna, which were following the army, found themselves blocked at the foot of the icebound slope, up which the horses were utterly unable to drag them. The last remaining guns and most of the waggons had to be abandoned. The army pay-chests, containing 10,000,000 francs, were abandoned and partly pillaged by the soldiers. Only Napoleon’s private treasure and carriages, and a very small proportion of the trains, were by desperate exertions preserved, 20 horses being necessary to drag a single vehicle up the hill. In the midst of the disorder and pillage the Cossacks arrived. Platov opened on the crowd with his light guns, but his wild horsemen for the most part fell upon the spoil and apparently disdained to take prisoners. The disaster was due to sheer lack of management, since the Novi Troki road, which was level and little longer, turned the hill to the south, and might easily have been used for the retreat. [Illustration: NAPOLEON’S TRAVELLING KITCHEN It was taken to Moscow and afterwards captured on the field of Waterloo Photographed for this work at the Royal Artillery Museum, Woolwich] It was as hopeless to attempt to hold firm at Kovno as at Vilna. There were 42 guns in the town, partly those of Loison’s division, which had been left there, great magazines of food and clothing, and about 2,500,000 francs in cash. There was a feeble _tête du pont_, but the Niemen was frozen and could be crossed anywhere on the ice. On the 12th the main body poured into the town--about 20,000 men, mostly in the last stage of misery and despair and nearly all disarmed. The Guard mustered 1600 bayonets and sabres. Ney, who had been fighting with Platov all the way from Vilna, reached the town in the evening; with the garrison troops added to the relics of the rear-guard he had not 2000 men. Efforts were made to distribute the stores and re-arm the disbanded troops, but the men threw away the muskets. The magazines were pillaged, the miserable wretches naturally fastening upon the spirit stores. Men drunken and dying lay in heaps in the snow-covered streets. Most of the benumbed fugitives lacked even the sense to avail themselves of the ice on the river; they crowded mechanically over the bridge, fighting for precedence, stifling and trampling each other down, as at the Berezina and Vilna. Murat placed some guns in battery on the left bank of the Niemen, and left for Königsberg on the 13th, while Ney and the rear-guard occupied the town, which they held until dark. Platov sent across a detachment on the ice, which captured the guns on the left bank and barred Ney’s retreat. His men were largely huddling in the houses; he had only a few hundred armed soldiers. He turned down the left bank of the river and then diverged to the left across the Pelwiski forest, eventually making his way by Gumbinnen to Königsberg.