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the disastrous return of Napoleon BonaparteRussia’s Grande Armée of 1812, which took the lives of approximately 300,000 of its half-million soldiers, marked the beginning of the end of its empire and European dominance.
Now, research is now providing a deeper understanding of the immense suffering endured by their soldiers.
Scientists have discovered dna Teeth of 13 French soldiers found in a mass grave vilniusLithuania, with the army’s difficult withdrawal route.
Analysis has uncovered two previously undocumented pathogens in connection with the phenomenon: bacteria Responsible for paratyphoid fever and lice-borne relapsing fever.
These findings, complementing earlier work, confirm that many infections have affected soldiers already ravaged by extreme cold, hunger, and exhaustion.
The Vilnius site, discovered in 2001, contains the remains of an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 of Napoleon’s ill-fated army.
“Vilnius was an important passage on the return route of 1812. Many soldiers came tired, hungry and sick,” said Nicolas Raskoven, senior author of the study published in the journal Nature and molecular biologist and geneticist and head of the Microbial Paleogenomics Unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. People died there and were buried in mass graves.” current biology,
“While cold, starvation and typhus have long been emphasized, our results show that paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever were also present and may have contributed to debilitation and mortality,” Mr Raskoven said.
Paratyphoid fever is usually transmitted through food or water, with symptoms such as fever, headache, stomach pain, diarrhea or constipation, weakness, and sometimes rash.
The form of relapsing fever that has been found is spread by body lice and causes recurring high fevers with headache, muscle pain and weakness.
In the study, four of 13 soldiers tested positive for paratyphoid fever bacteria and two for relapsing fever bacteria. The symptoms of both illnesses match those described in historical accounts of the retreat.
A 2006 study involving DNA from 35 other soldiers from the same cemetery revealed the pathogens behind typhus and trench fever, diseases that cause symptoms similar to paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever. Typhus and trench fever were not detected in the new study.
Napoleon led the Grande Armée on his invasion of Russia in 1812 and marched on Moscow. However, the campaign failed and they were forced to retreat due to factors including dwindling supplies, counter-attacks, and the onset of the brutal Russian winter.
The new findings add nuance to the story of the plight of the French emperor’s soldiers, pointing to a scenario of high prevalence of multiple infectious diseases, not just one or two diseases in circulation.
The study does not determine the overall impact of the newly identified pathogens or establish them as widespread throughout the military, but helps explain the medical complexity of the retreat.
“Ancient DNA allows us to name infections that symptom-based accounts alone cannot resolve. The co-occurrence of pathogens with different transmission routes underlines how severe the sanitary conditions were,” Mr Raskoven said.
“Future work at more sites and individuals will refine the 1812 disease landscape.”
The study shows how the continually improving science of ancient DNA analysis can provide new insights into historical events.
“Ancient DNA allows us to directly test historical hypotheses, which can confirm or complicate narratives constructed from history and traits,” Mr. Raskoven said.
“With careful validation, genomics reveals which pathogens were present, how they evolved and persisted, and how they spread – helping historians and scientists reconstruct complex crises with greater resolution.”