In the summer of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte embarked on an ambitious invasion of Russia with an army of 600,000 men, the Grande Armée. However, upon arriving in Moscow they found themselves in an empty city, and the Russians, applying the scorched-earth tactic, left them without provisions and forced the French to retreat before winter. That retreat resulted in a military disaster for Napoleon, where the extreme cold and lack of supplies severely affected his troops. A recent study from the Pasteur Institute has identified bacteria in the remains of the French soldiers, revealing that diseases such as paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever also played a deadly role.
Nicolás Rascovan, head of the microbial paleogenomics unit at the Pasteur Institute, and his team, analyzed remains found in Vilna, concluding that the lack of hygiene, hunger, and low temperatures favored the spread of diseases transmitted by lice and contaminated water. These common pathogens under normal circumstances became deadly in a context of extreme immunosuppression. Although typhus was not detected in this specific study, earlier records found DNA of the causative agent in other soldiers. This paleogenetic analysis helps us understand the critical impact of infectious diseases on the failure of the Russian campaign, reflecting a problem that persists in modern conflicts.
Read the full news article on The Country.
