Scourge of War Boards

I do a lot of work with maps - this is a great one. I used it as an example for a GIS lecture recently - see if you can guess what going on and what the different line thickness mean.

http://cjrarchive.org/img/posts/Minard-large.png

Looks like the French army sure got smaller and the Russian bigger as they went along. :laugh:

Close! The french army coloured in beige/brown is in the advance to Russia, the black represents their retreat. The width represents the size of the force.

You can see what a disaster it was.....

Napoleons invasion of Russia in 1812. Its the temperatures what really defeated Napoleon. He defeated the Russians at Borodino when it was still warm and then occupied Moscow after which it was burnt to the ground. It then got really cold and seeing no more winter quarters for his army he had to retreat where temperatures plumeted further. A key point on the retreat was the Battle of Berezina, marked as Studienska, where the French army was stuck while it built three large bridges across the river. The French army could of been wiped out here if the Ruissians were not so cautious. As it happened it was almost wiped out anyway. Nice one con20or.

It's a great map. It also brings out that Napoleon lost a lot more men from typhus etc in the heat of summer than he did in the winter retreat, which still surprises me.

Martin

I was also surprised by that - he loses 300,000 before he even gets to moscow, but i assumed that was garrison, supply depot guards etc.

Although if you work it like that , he lost approx 75% of his troops he started out from france with on the way there, but 96% of the troops he started out with from moscow on the march back!

Those sorts of graphs of losses apply to all armies in all eras prior to modern medicine. Early in the campaign losses are extremely high from disease, exhaustion, straggling, desertion, etc as many men drafted into the ranks are simply not physically able to conduct the marches and live in the open air conditions.

After Moscow the men still left with the colours were the 'hardcore' men, the grognards; very fit and hardened to the rigours of campaigning. This map/diagram shows those two conditions well: huge losses in summer initially and relatively smaller losses later in winter.

If you were to look at the attrition rates of any ACW regiment I expect you'd see the same statistics.

yea, the ratio between deaths in combat and from disease was exceptionaly high in this campign, about 1 to 10

I still believe Napoleons most impressive campaign was the early part of the 1814 campaign of France where he did a remarkable job of defending France against a tide of allied troops after Leipzig, at one point winning 6 consecutive battles.

Still, in this case, it argues that a good offence is sometimes no defence. :laugh: B)
Let mother nature do the heavy lifting.

I'm astounded at some who play WoT who think they have to attack to win. Lots of kids..... can't waite till school starts. :laugh: