Napoleon’s March to Moscow - by Charles Joseph Minard
A pretty awesome graph. Here’s the description from the source where I found it:
“Minard’s masterpiece graphically illustrates the terrible fate of the French army during its invasion of Russia, which began in June of 1812. The graph is a multivariate depiction of the decimation of Napoleon’s troops during the campaign: It gives a timeline, the direction they marched, the weather conditions, the topography of the land, and the size of the army every step of the way as the troops advanced and then withdrew from tough Russian resistance and brutal winter weather conditions.
“The width of the band at the top of the graph represents a vast French army of 422,000 troops, gathered on the Polish-Russian border at the start of their march to conquer Russia. As the graph moves West to East, the band gets thinner because within 100 days, Napoleon reached Moscow with only 100,000 troops left only to discover the city sacked and deserted. As the graph moves back East to West, the band gets thinner and darker as Napoleon and his men retreat back to Poland’s borders through the winter of 1812-1813. They made it back with roughly 10,000 men surviving the campaign.”
