Photo: popsci
In 1812, about 600,000 French soldiers led by Napoleon invaded the Russian Empire. Six months later, only around 50,000 remained. For a long time, historians believed that Napoleon’s army perished mainly due to freezing temperatures, hunger, and enemy attacks. However, a new study has revealed another deadly factor behind the army’s destruction.
In early autumn 1812, Napoleon entered Moscow expecting peace talks, but Emperor Alexander I ordered the city to be burned. As a result, hundreds of thousands of French troops were left without food supplies, forcing Napoleon to retreat. Within a few months, most of his soldiers had died — not only from the cold and starvation but also from infectious diseases.
Scientists had long assumed that thousands of French troops died from trench fever and typhus. But DNA analysis of remains found in a mass grave in Lithuania revealed traces of Salmonella enterica and Borrelia recurrentis — the bacteria responsible for typhoid fever and relapsing fever.
According to the study’s authors, it was these diseases that decimated Napoleon’s army. No traces of bacteria that cause trench fever or epidemic typhus were found.
