On the morn of June 23rd, three immense French columns wound their way to the pontoon bridges hastily thrown over the Niemen near Kovno; and loud shouts of triumph greeted the great leader as the vanguard set foot on Lithuanian soil. No Russians were seen except a few light horsemen, who galloped up, inquired of the engineers why they were building the bridges, and then rode hastily away. During three days the Grand Army filed over the river and melted away into the sandy wastes. No foe at first contested their march, but neither were they met by the crowds of downtrodden natives whom their fancy pictured as thronging to welcome the liberators. In truth, the peasants of Lithuania had no very close racial affinity to the Poles, whose offshoots were found chiefly among the nobles and the wealthier townsfolk. Solitude, the sultry heat of a Russian mid-summer, and drenching thunderstorms depressed the spirits of the invaders. The miserable cart tracks were at once cut up by the passage of the host, and 10,000 horses perished of fatigue or of disease caused by the rank grass, in the fifty miles' march from the Niemen to Vilna. The difficulties of the transport service began at once, and they were to increase with every day's march. With his usual foresight, Napoleon had ordered the collection of immense stores of all kinds at Danzig, his chief base of supplies. Two million pairs of boots were required for the wear and tear of a long campaign, and all preparations were on the same colossal scale. In this connection it is noteworthy that no small proportion of the cloaks and boots came from England, as the industrial resources of the Continent were wholly unequal to supplying the crusaders of the Continental System. A great part of those stores never reached the troops in Russia. The wherries sent from Danzig to the Niemen were often snapped up by British cruisers, and the carriage of stores from the Niemen entailed so frightful a waste of horseflesh that only the most absolute necessaries could keep pace with the army in its rapid advance. The men were thus left without food except such as marauding could extort. In this art Napoleon's troops were experts. Many miles of country were scoured on either side of the line of march, and the Emperor, on reaching Vilna, had to order Ney to send out cavalry patrols to gather in the stragglers, who were committing "horrible devastations" and would "fall into the hands of the Cossacks."