army's line of retreat to the north, instructing the rest of his troops to fall back on Amiens. After arriving at Amiens, Farre held a council of war with his subordinates which came to the conclusion that a further defense of Amiens was impractical given the army's weakness and its loss of Villers-Bretonneux, Boves, and Dury. Farre ordered the Army of the North to abandon Amiens and continue the retreat, withdrawing toward Arras and Doullens. Only at Cachy, where a rear guard fought to protect the Army of the North's withdrawal, did the French resist until late evening. By the time the fighting ended, the French had suffered 1,383 soldiers killed or wounded, and about 1,000 were declared missing. The Prussians lost 76 officers and 1,216 men. Under the misimpression that he was fighting a large army under Bourbaki's command and that Farre's surviving forces might outnumber his own, Manteuffel made no attempt to pursue the retreating French into Amiens, and when night fell on 27 November, the Prussians believed the French still held the city. The fall of Amiens Early on the morning of 28 November 1870, the Prussians noted that the French positions were strangely quiet and lacked sentries. Prussian patrols went forward and found the French earthworks empty except for abandoned cannons and the bodies of men killed the day before. Goeben came forward and ordered his forces to advance into Amiens from the south via the road through Hébécourt and Dury. The Prussians passed numbers of dead French soldiers and horses as they advanced along the road through the abandoned French defenses and captured the artillery pieces the French had left behind. After Goeben and his troops arrived in Amiens, three battalions of the Prussian 40th Regiment and two batteries of artillery paraded past him in review. The garrison of the citadel of Amiens — 12 officers and 450 men of the city under the command of a retired French Army officer, Commandant Jean-François Vogel, and armed with rifles and between 22 and 30 pieces of artillery — refused to surrender to the Prussians, even after 50 of the garrison's men deserted. The mayor of Amiens approached Goeben and implored him to persuade Vogel to surrender to avoid damage to the city and deaths among the citadel's garrison, but the citadel replied to the Prussian offer of surrender by opening fire. Two companies of the Prussian