#napoleonic-wars

#napoleonic-wars

Originally called the Grand Triumphal Arch, it was built in part to commemorate Britain's victories in the Napoleonic Wars and as part of King George IV's remodelling of Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace. Announced in 1825, it would take a year of wrangling to settle on a design for the arch. The chosen architect, Decimus Burton, initially planned a triumphal arch modelled on the Arch of Titus in Rome,

When Napoleon ordered his army to retreat from Russia in October 1812, disaster ensued. Starving, cold, exhausted and struggling with sickness, an estimated 300,000 soldiers died. Researchers now say they have identified two unexpected diseases among soldiers who died in the retreat paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever which provide fresh insights into their plight. I think that the key thing of why [the retreat] was such a failure was the cold and the hunger and so on.