Napoleons‘ march to Russia
In June 1812, Napoleon gathered a massive army of more than 400,000 troops and around 200,000 horses to attack Russia. The enormous logistics v.a. in terms of food and food supplies for this terrific failed campaign enough to meet the requirements and the losses were enormous.
Charles Joseph Minard has recorded the losses with a remarkable amount of information at that time drawing information. The width of the band shows the troop strength at the time. When Bonaparte reached Moscow in September 1812, it was decimated to about 100,000 men. In addition, the temperatures are displayed on the x-axis (to a minimum of -30 degrees Celsius). The various units of the Grande Armée were reduced to fewer than 40,000 men by illness, freezing and starvation when they reached Poland in December on the retreat. A tragedy of incredible dimensions, which Charles Minard recorded as probably the first data visualization
The animation illustrates the timing of the losses in an impressive way.
