August 10, 2025
2 Min read
Has the disease defeated Napoleon?
Napoleon’s campaign against the Russian Empire was one of the most expensive wars in history. Many soldiers died of diseases. Some of these diseases are now identified only
From June 24, 1812, around 600,000 soldiers led by the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte crossed the Neman river to invade the Russian Empire. War was one of the most expensive in history, and just under six months later, only a few tens of thousands of men returned to the other side of the river.
Massive losses have historically been attributed to soldiers who fell into battle, succumbing to the frostbite, samping to death or die in an epidemic of typhus. But now, a new preliminary study not revised by microbiologist Rémi Barbieri of the University of Paris City and his team have identified other pathogens who could have been responsible for a large part of death.
The historical files of the time show that the doctors who accompanied the army diagnosed typhus from symptoms such as fever, headache and rashes, and an analysis of remains in a 2006 study had suggested possible infections by typhus and fever of the trenches. But when Barbieri and his team examined the preserved teeth of 13 of the soldiers who fell from Napoleon, they could not find proof of Rickettsia prowazekii, the bacteria responsible for epidemic typhus, or Bartonella Quintana, The cause of the fever of the trenches, which infected more than a million soldiers during the First World War.
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Instead, they found traces of the bacteria Salmonella Enterica– which causes typhoid fever, not to be confused with typhus and Recurrent Borrelia, This causes a fever relapse and is mainly transmitted by the lice of the body.
With the help of modern medicine, typhoid and relapse fever both have very high survival rates. But these unidentified pathogens previously could easily have caused death among soldiers who had already been weakened by cold and hunger and lived in terrible hygienic conditions.
The researchers note that their sample of 13 soldiers is too small to be sure that other diseases, such as typhus, did not kill many other soldiers during Napoleon’s retreat. They have not yet found any evidence of such infections.
Napoleon himself survived almost unscathed retired. However, losses have reigned over Europe at a slow end. In 1815, Napoleon was finally defeated by the United Kingdom and Prussia during the battle of Waterloo.
This article originally appeared in Science spectrum and was reproduced with permission.
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