Napoleon’s Unexpected and Deadly Foe
Disease not cannon balls and bullets was responsible for two of his most important defeats.
In late June 1812 Napoleon’s Grand Armée marched across the Niemen River into Tsar Alexander’s Russia. More than half a million soldiers plus their entourage of 50,000 wives, mistresses, attendants, cooks and other personnel stretched for 20 miles as they marched. This population, that author Stephan Talty called a “portable metropolis” in his book the Illustrious Dead, contained more people than Paris. When the Grand Armée returned six months later only 1 in 40 remained. Few soldiers had been killed by Russians in battle. Instead, dysentery and typhus proved far more deadly than cannon balls and bullets.
When Napoleon entered Russia he expected to swiftly engage the Russians, attain a decisive victory, and march on to Moscow and St. Petersburg to demand Alexander’s surrender. Once he secured control of Russia, he planned to continue on to India, the crown jewel of 19th century British colonial riches. However, the Russian generals planned a different strategy than Napoleon anticipated. As described by historian Frank M. Snowden in Epidemics and Society they refused to engage Napoleon directly. They scuffled and retreated east, forcing Napoleon into a chase. As the Grand Armée pursued, they ignored concern for health and sanitation. The troops and horses marched through muddied terrain, deep rutted roads, and damp marshland. The land they traversed was lightly populated. Few opportunities existed for soldiers to raid crops and pillage resources on the barren and wet land. Stores of food became depleted in these bleak conditions. Most importantly, as they pursued the Russian army, the troops and horses urinated and defecated along the same soggy paths that those to the rear walked and slept upon.
Soon dysentery and other illness set upon the soldiers. Dysentery is a bacterial infection often transmitted through fecal matter. When the soldiers cleared mud from their boots and clothes or stopped to rest it was easy for their hands and faces to become contaminated with bacteria from the soiled ground. From these it was easy to accidentally ingest bacteria that caused soaring fevers, excruciating stomach cramps, and most importantly diarrhea and dehydration that led to death. By the end of August, Snowden writes that four thousand men were dying daily from disease. Still, Napoleon continued a hasty pursuit.
Finally, on September 7th Napoleon gained his long-sought battle. It occurred at Borodino, just 75 miles west of Moscow. Napoleon’s manpower advantage was narrower than expected due to the disease outbreak among his troops. Additionally, the Russians had arrived to the site of battle four days in advance and took the most strategic positions. The French won the battle but lost 30,000 troops. Russia lost 40,000. The win was far from the decisive victory that Napoleon desired and expected.
Then Napoleon erred. He gave the Russians time to retreat again – farther east to Moscow. Here the Russians evacuated residents, retreated even farther east, and torched the city upon Napoleon’s arrival. Napoleon waited with little food and shelter in the charred shambles that remained of the city. He expected Alexander to surrender with the loss of Moscow. But Napoleon’s envoys to St. Petersburg were met with silence.
Before arriving in Moscow Napoleon’s forces had been cut by at least one-third. The dead numbered 120,000 from disease alone. In Moscow illness continued to beset the French troops. Hundreds to thousands died every day. When Napoleon finally gave up and left Moscow on October 18th, one month after his arrival, only 100,000 soldiers were left. His retreat became even more desperate as the Russian army strategically forced his return along already looted and pillaged roads and countryside. Then Napoleon’s calamity became even worse. As winter set in, the ill-nourished soldiers slept huddled together enmasse to avoid freezing to death on the same muddied, wet, and desolate roads they had crossed heading east just months earlier. This allowed lice to spread unchecked among the soldiers. Typhus, a deadly illness spread by lice, took root. Dysentery continued. Thousands continued to die each day from disease. After crossing the Niemen and back into French territory the Grand Armée contained fewer than ten thousand troops.
One can see the steady depletion of the Grand Armée in Charles Joseph Minard’s 1869 graphic of the French path to defeat.
Figure 1: Recreation and translation to English of Minard’s 1869 graphic of the size and path of Napoleon’s French troops in 1812, available here. The height of the band represents the number of troops in the Grand Armée. Note the small decrease in size just west of the Moskva River from 127,100 to 100,000. This is the Battle of Borodino - the largest military conflict of the war. It pales in comparison to troops lost elsewhere during the march from France to Moscow (in red) and back to France (in black). These were due mostly to disease but also starvation and desertion. Original graphic and discussion of its creation can be found here.
The map charts Napoleon’s course as well as the depletion of his troops (measured as the height of the band) along with the temperature decrease over the return journey. It is notable that the decrease in troops at the Battle of Borodino (visible in the decrease of 127,100 troops to 100,000 just to the west of the Moskva River) is tiny in comparison to other decreases during the war. Disease and not battle casualties destroyed the Grand Armée.
This was not the first time that disease had ruined Napoleon’s plans for conquering a continent. A decade earlier Napoleon set his sights on North America. In 1802, the French still held over 800,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River. In order to expand French trade and territory in North America, Napoleon needed to regain Saint Domingue (now Haiti) to produce sugar and for use as a staging and trade port. In the early 18th century, while under French control, Saint Domingue stood as the most profitable sugar producer in the western world. In subsequent years, control revolved between 18th century European powers. Eventually a slave revolt left Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture to proclaim himself governor.
In order to launch his interests in North America, Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, General Victor-Emmanuel LeClerc to reassert French authority. In late January 1802, LeClerc and 20,000 troops landed at Saint Domingue. In short time nearly all of the island was under French control once again. What appeared an easy victory, that would lead Napoleon’s entry into North America, would turn into utter defeat shortly thereafter.
As LeClerc awaited reinforcements to complete the takeover in full, his troops began to fall ill with fever, black vomit, and diarrhea, all common symptoms of yellow fever. As spring rains arrived and the mosquito population grew, an epidemic exploded among the troops. Despite arresting Toussaint L’Ouverture and taking him to France, where he would die in prison a year later, French control began to dwindle as the epidemic continued to mount. LeClerc along with as many as 50,000 original and reinforced French troops perished from yellow fever over the next few months. Few would survive to return to France. Following defeat by disease, Napoleon retired his plans for North America and less than a year later he sold his lands in the Mississippi Valley to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.
Napoleon’s bid into Russia was intended to provide a path to conquering Britain in India. Control of St. Dominique was intended to return French power to North America. If accomplished each would yield trade, land, and a bounty of colonial riches for France. In the end both plots failed-not because of defeat on a battlefield, but instead from the ravages of Napoleon’s unexpected and deadly foe, infectious disease. Without Napoleon losing more soldiers to disease than battle, his empire may have stretched from Calcutta to North America.
Troy Tassier is a professor at Fordham University and the author of the forthcoming book, The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus: How Our Unequal Society Fails Us during Outbreaks.
For further reading:
Joshua Loomis: Epidemics: The Impact of Germs and Their Power Over Humanity
Frank M. Snowden: Epidemics and Society from the Black Death to Present
Stephan Talty: The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon’s Greatest Army