"Scientifc discovery about the Grande Armée of 1812" Topic

Latest discovery

Paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever in 1812 Napoleon's devastated army

• Genetic evidence of S. Paratyphi C and B. recurrentis in Napoleonic soldiers
• Phylogeny-driven authentication workflow for ultra-low-coverage pathogen aDNA
• Historical descriptions of the soldiers' illnesses match paratyphoid fever symptoms
• Multiple infections likely contributed to the collapse of Napoleon's 1812 campaign

During Napoleon's retreat from Russia in 1812, countless soldiers of the French army succumbed to infectious diseases, but the responsible pathogen or pathogens remain debated. We recovered and sequenced ancient DNA from the teeth of 13 soldiers who, based on historical records, likely died from infectious diseases, aiming to identify the pathogens responsible for their deaths. Our results confirmed the presence of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica belonging to the lineage Paratyphi C, the causative agent of paratyphoid fever; and Borrelia recurrentis, responsible for relapsing fever transmitted by body lice. We were not able to detect Rickettsia prowazekii (the agent of typhus) and Bartonella quintana (the cause of trench fever), which had previously been associated with this deadly event, based on PCR results and historical symptom descriptions. The presence of these previously unsuspected pathogens in these soldiers reveal that they could have contributed to the devastation of Napoleon's Grande Armée during its disastrous retreat in 1812.

In June of 1812, Napoleon I, the French emperor, assembled a military force of about 500,000–600,000 soldiers to invade Russia. After arriving in Moscow without decisively defeating the Russian army, the Napoleonic forces, finding themselves isolated in a ruined city, opted to initiate a retreat and to establish winter encampments along the border with Poland in October that year. The retreat from Russia spanned from October 19 to December 14 1812 and resulted in the loss of nearly the entire Napoleonic army. According to historians, it was not the harassment from the Russian army that claimed the lives of about 300,000 men, but rather the harsh cold of the Russian winter, coupled with hunger and diseases. A doctor during the Russian campaign, J.R.L. de Kirckhoff, authored a book detailing the illnesses that afflicted soldiers in 1812. Specifically, he documented the prevalence of typhus, diarrhea, dysentery, fevers, pneumonia, and jaundice. Other physicians, as well as officers, made similar observations about the illnesses affecting soldiers. Different infectious diseases, such as typhus, have been described in French regiments even before the start of the Russian campaign. Typhus, in particular, which is commonly referred to as camp fever due to its frequent association with armies, has long been suspected of being the main infectious cause of the demise of the Grande Armée in 1812. This assumption was fueled by the discovery of body lice, the main vector of typhus, among the remains of Napoleonic soldiers who perished during the Great Retreat from Russia in December 1812 in Vilnius, Lithuania, as well as by the alleged identification of R. prowazekii and B. quintana sequences amplified by nested PCR in some of these individuals.3 However, this earlier study was limited by the technologies available at the time and relied solely on the amplification of two short DNA fragments (192 and 429 base pairs [bp] long), which did not offer sufficient resolution to provide unambiguous evidence for the presence of these pathogens in Napoleon's army. Several years later, another study successfully detected Anelloviridae viral ancient DNA (aDNA) in Napoleonic soldiers recovered in Kaliningrad in 1812, but these viruses are ubiquitous and asymptomatic in human populations and therefore unrelated to the fatal fate of these soldiers. Using state-of-the-art aDNA methodologies, we reanalyzed samples from Napoleonic soldiers who died in Vilnius and identified pathogen-specific genetic material, providing direct evidence of infectious agents that may have contributed to the army's collapse.

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So? Infectious disease was always the biggest killer of armies until the 20th century.

It doesn't matter what pathogen killed La Grande Armee, they died like flies to satisfy the ambition of a Corsican upstart.

Different report on the same subject I read this morning. More technical but as interesting to me. More soldiers died from disease than battles throughout the centuries.

14Bore

By a factor of anything up to 19 out of every 20?

Interesting but not surprising. However, once again the report suggests that the majority of the Grande Armee's casualties were during the retreat. If I remember correctly, though the Emperor may have set out with almost half a million men, by the time he set out from Moscow he was down to just over 100,000. i.e. most losses were suffered during the advance.

Best ilustration of the Grande Armee's deteriorating numbers is Charles Joseph Minard's Flow Map for the 1812 campaign (best quality and size is via the link):
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A sample of 4 out of 0.5 million taken from a non representative location does not justify any claim that it defines in any way what the bulk of the army were suffering from, but sadly exaggeration is the sine qua non of archaeology, because by normal scientific standards they never have enough data.

Re Minard's flow map; I've always been disappointed that he didn't put the temperature on for the route out to show how hot it was during the advance.

Am I wrong in recalling Minard's chart as showing strategic attrition? That is, some of those "losses" were perfectly healthy men guarding flanks and lines of communication.

Overall, of course, armies assembled from a wide area, hazy about how diseases spread and poorly fed are pretty much disease outbreaks waiting to happen. In pre-modern times, simply to mobilize an army was to kill people--more so if it took to the field.

Robert, If they were they didn't rejoin on the way back or the line would thicken again, so either they were lost to enemy action against the rear zones or they are real losses to disease; I suspect predominantly the latter as I've never see any evidence of genuine lines of communication i n the modern sense i.e. with supply convoys moving up and down. That's why the 'scorched earth' policy was so effective.

Some do, and you can see the black "return" line thicken once, Mark. And think of the Westphalians, who never got closer to Moscow than Borodino. Also think of Austrians and Prussians, left guarding the strategic flanks, never returned, but by no means all dead. One the the real problems for Napoleon is that his spearhead which marched all the way to Moscow and took the worst percentage losses were also the most politically reliable troops.

Robert,

The Minard diagram represents just the main army – not the Austrian & Saxon wing. I accept it is not a perfect representation but does give a good sense of attrition. Garrisons were certainly left behind as the main army advanced on Moscow e.g. Minsk, Mohilev & Smolensk.

The first detachment from Minard's diagram is MacDonald's X Corps; the second much larger detachment which goes via Polotsk is Oudinot's II Corps, St Cyr's VI Corps & Doumerc's 3rd Cuirassier Division.

The question I have is how are Victor's IX Corps and Augereau's XI Corps accounted for in the diagram (if at all)?

Ian