"Seeking to force Russian Tsar Alexander I to comply with his trade embargo against Britain, Napoleon led the largest army Europe had ever seen across Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus before marching on Russia. In the summer of 1812, his forces successfully captured Moscow. From there, they fell into a stalemate with those of the Tsar, who refused to negotiate. Laden with treasure, and Napoleon himself have already departed for Paris, the Grande Armee delayed its withdrawal until October 17."
"Typhus and trench fever were previously established as diseases that tore through the ranks of Napoleon's army during the 1812 retreat. The newly uncovered infections cause different diseases with similar symptoms. "Even today, it would be nearly impossible to make a differential diagnosis between these [fever] symptoms with the different pathogens," said Nicolas Rascovan, a paleogenomicist from the Pasteur Institute, who led the study. "It would be impossible for a doctor to tell you which pathogen is infecting you.""
The Grande Armée marched into Russia in 1812 and captured Moscow but stalled as Tsarist forces refused to negotiate. The army delayed withdrawal until October 17, leaving it vulnerable to the advancing Russian winter, dwindling rations, and widespread disease. Barely 30,000 soldiers, about 6% of the original force, survived the retreat. Paleogenomic analysis identified two additional bacterial species that caused fever among soldiers, alongside previously recognized typhus and trench fever. The infections produced similar symptoms, making differential diagnosis effectively impossible, and contributed alongside starvation and freezing to the army's catastrophic losses.
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