Napoleon and how to use graphics effectively - a lesson from 1869. NB: post ends with cannon fire.

 Not infrequently we see a graphic like this 

that consumes a huge amount of space in comparison to a simple sentence: "45% of the patients were male and 55% female". That picture is surely not worth 1,000 words.

By contrast in 1869 Charles Joseph Minard set the standard for the most content-rich graphic.

Let me first sent the scene.

In the summer of 1812, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte

 launched his most ambitious and disastrous military campaign: the invasion of Russia. At its height, his Grande Armée numbered over 600,000 soldiers, drawn from across Europe — French, German, Italian, Polish, and others. 

His goal was to force Tsar Alexander I of Russia back into compliance with the Continental System, a blockade designed to isolate Britain economically

On June 24, 1812, Napoleon’s army crossed the Niemen River, entering Russian territory. He expected a swift victory — perhaps a single decisive battle leading to Russian surrender. Instead, the Russians under Generals Barclay de Tolly and later Kutuzov refused to give battle. They retreated steadily eastward, employing a scorched-earth policy: burning crops, villages, and supplies to deny resources to the invaders.

As Napoleon advanced deeper into Russia, the vast distances, poor roads, heat, and disease took a terrible toll. Thousands of horses died; supply lines stretched thin. Yet Napoleon pressed forward, hoping for a decisive engagement.

The Russians finally made a stand at Borodino, about 70 miles west of Moscow, on September 7, 1812. It was one of the bloodiest single-day battles of the Napoleonic Wars.The French attacked fiercely, using artillery and infantry in massive assaults.The Russians, entrenched behind earthworks, resisted stubbornly. By the day’s end, about 70,000 men were dead or wounded. The Russians withdrew in good order, but the path to Moscow lay open.

Napoleon entered Moscow on September 14, 1812, expecting Tsar Alexander to sue for peace. Instead, the city was nearly deserted — and soon fires broke out, destroying much of it. The French occupation turned hollow and desperate. With winter approaching, no peace offer came, and supplies were dwindling.

After five weeks in the ruined city, Napoleon realized he could not remain. On October 19, 1812, he began the retreat which was a catastrophe. Temperatures dropped rapidly, roads turned to ice, and snowstorms struck the exhausted troops. The Grande Armée, already weakened by hunger and disease, disintegrated under the strain. Cossack cavalry and Russian regulars harried the retreating columns. Starvation, frostbite, and exhaustion killed tens of thousands. At the crossing of the Berezina River in late November, only desperate improvisation saved a fraction of the army from total destruction.

Napoleon returned to Paris ahead of his shattered army, arriving in December 1812. The disaster marked the turning point of his empire. His aura of invincibility was broken; within two years, a coalition of European powers had driven him from power.

The campaign became a symbol of hubris and overreach, and its horrors were immortalized in literature, art, and one of the most famous data visualizations in history — Charles Joseph Minard’s 1869 diagram of the army’s advance and retreat, showing both the route and the dwindling number of survivors as the temperature dropped.

In this action-packed illustration, Napolean's advance into Russia is shown in tan, while his retreat is shown in black. The width of the tan and black reflect the number of troops. Of the more than 600,000 men who had entered Russia, fewer than 25,000 returned. At the bottom of the chart is a plot of the temperature the troops experienced on the way home: 43 degrees F when leaving Moscow on October 19, 1812 dropping to -15 degrees F at the crossing of the Berezina River on November 29, 1812.

For the history buffs, the story is told in detail here.

To bring this post to a close, click on this celebration of Napolean's defeat. 

Full performance w/ pyrotechnics! | Tchaikovsky | 1812 Overture

complete with canon fire.

This post was inspired by an article in today's New York Times:

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