DNA From Dead Soldiers Sheds New Light on Napoleon’s Russian Nightmare

Napoleon’s withdrawal from Russia in 1812 was one of history’s most disastrous retreats. New research bolsters the theory that diseases made the calamitous situation even worse.

Researchers in France and Estonia have identified pathogens in the remains of soldiers who retreated from Russia that cause paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever. While the study doesn’t determine how widespread the diseases were, it identifies potential culprits behind the symptoms described in historical records of Napoleon’s army.

“The retreat from Russia spanned from October 19 to December 14 1812 and resulted in the loss of nearly the entire Napoleonic army,” the researchers wrote in a study published Friday in the journal Current Biology. “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.”

Fever-causing pathogens

The team recovered and sequenced DNA from the teeth of soldiers previously exhumed in Lithuania, who likely died from infectious diseases. Their analysis revealed evidence of two pathogens—a subspecies of Salmonella enterica belonging to the lineage Paratyphi C (S. enterica Paratyphi C), which causes paratyphoid fever; and Borrelia recurrentis, which causes relapsing fever.

The results represent the first genetic evidence of Napoleon’s soldiers being afflicted by these pathogens. Specifically, four of the soldiers tested positive for S. enterica Paratyphi C and two for B. recurrentis. Both diseases can cause high fever, fatigue, and digestive problems, and their symptoms align with those described in historical records of Napoleon’s army. With soldiers already suffering from cold, hunger, and poor hygiene, one can only imagine the state of these men.

Because the researchers only investigated 13 soldiers out of the approximately 300,000 who died during the retreat from Russia, they can’t determine how many deaths these pathogens may have caused. Nonetheless, “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,” the researchers explain.

Modern relevance

Investigating the genomic data of historically relevant pathogens sheds light on the development of infectious diseases, carrying implications for the study of such illnesses today, Nicolás Rascovan, co-author of the study and head of the microbial paleogenomics unit at the Institut Pasteur, explained in a statement by the institute.

Rascovan and his colleagues’ work further bolsters the hypothesis that in addition to stressors such as fatigue, cold, and harsh conditions, infectious diseases contributed to the collapse of Napoleon’s 1812 campaign in Russia. More broadly, the study also offers additional insight into an infamous military failure, one whose historical lessons were largely ignored by Adolf Hitler over a century later during Operation Barbarossa, when his own poorly equipped troops suffered in the freezing Russian cold.