FRANCE: Ever since his catastrophic retreat from Moscow, the terrible losses suffered by Napoleon's soldiers have been blamed on hunger and the biting cold of the Russian winter.
But, according to new research by French scientists, the fabled Grande Armée, reduced to a mere 30,000 men by December 1812 from a total of 600,000-700,000 just six months earlier, was actually felled by fleas.
Researchers led by Didier Raoult of the National Scientific Research Centre in Marseille have analysed the DNA of 72 teeth extracted from 35 skeletons found in a mass military grave near Vilnius, in present-day Lithuania, in 1995.
They found minute traces of the microbes associated with typhoid and trench fever, both deadly diseases transmitted by fleas, in the dental matter of 10 Napoleonic soldiers, the newspaper Le Figaro reported yesterday.
The scientists confirmed their hypothesis by identifying the remains of three fleas in 5kg of soil and human remnants taken from the grave, in the grounds of a former army camp occupied in turn by Tsarist forces, Hitler's invading troops and finally the Soviet army.
"We are confident in this diagnosis," one of the team, Pierre-Edouard Fournier, told the paper. "Cold and hunger certainly claimed many victims, but diseases greatly increased the toll."
The Grande Armée, at 691,000 men the largest fighting force assembled in Europe, crossed the river Neman in Lithuania on June 23rd, 1812, and began its long march towards Moscow.
Meeting only sporadic resistance, Napoleon reached his objective in early September.
The invaders found Moscow empty of people and supplies, and much of the city immediately went up in flames in what is assumed to be sabotage by Russian fighters.
The Corsican-born emperor abandoned the ruined city on October 19th of the same year.
It immediately became clear that his disastrous retreat was going to become one of the most celebrated military debacles in history.