French invasion of Russia

14 December 1812: Kovno at ten in the morning

At about 10 a.m. on 14 December 1812, Russian forces under Matvei Platov and Joseph O'Rourke reached Kovno, still held by Marshal Michel Ney's French rearguard.

Cossacks crossed the frozen Neman above and below the town and threatened to surround the defenders. Ney evacuated Kovno that evening, burning the bridges over the Neman and the Vilija as his force withdrew.

What was left of the central army

The organized remnant representing Napoleon's central army that day amounted to roughly 1,000 combatants — 400 Old Guard infantry and 600 Guard cavalry — with nine guns before the losses at Kovno.

Russian forces took about 3,000 prisoners, four guns and substantial stores when the town fell. Ney fought through Kovno and got away with only about 200 armed men still around him.

Why this is not quite the end of the invasion

The evacuation removed the last organized rearguard of the central army across the Neman, but Macdonald's northern corps and the Schwarzenberg–Reynier wing were still on Russian territory, so the claim that all remnants were expelled on 14 December is inaccurate.

Sources also disagree on the day itself. The detailed Kovno narrative dates Ney's evacuation to 14 December; other accounts, among them the EHNE encyclopedia, put the survivors' crossing of the Neman on 13 December, and one Fondation Napoléon overview gives 16 December. The Gregorian 14 December corresponds to 2 December in the Russian Julian calendar then in use.

The often-repeated image of Ney firing the last shot and being the final Frenchman across comes from memoir tradition rather than an uncontested official record.