Zwei fiebererregende Bakterien könnten Napoleons katastrophalen Rückzug aus Russland im Jahr 1812 verschlimmert haben, vermuten Forscher nach der Analyse von DNA aus den Zähnen napoleonischer Soldaten
Napoleon’s retreating army may have been plagued by these microbes
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>In 1812, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte led a doomed army on a disastrous retreat from Russia. With food scarce, winter approaching and diseases running rampant, hundreds of thousands of soldiers ultimately perished. Scientists have now pinpointed some microbes that may have played a part in their demise.
>[Ancient DNA extracted from the teeth of Napoleonic soldiers](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01247-3) revealed two species of fever-causing bacteria, geneticist Nicolás Rascovan of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and his colleagues report October 24 in *Current Biology*. The soldiers probably lived and died amid a teeming cauldron of infectious disease, something historians have long posited.
>The results align with eyewitness accounts from over 200 years ago, says Rafe Blaufarb, a historian specializing in Napoleonic history. Doctors back then chronicled soldiers’ symptoms, which included fever, diarrhea, pneumonia and other signs of bacterial infection. The new work, which identified two species of bacteria not previously tied to the deadly retreat, brings some “DNA-level biological details to the story,” says Blaufarb, of Florida State University in Tallahassee.
[Read more here](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/napoleon-army-retreat-russia-bacteria) and the [research article here](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01247-3).