Institut Pasteur and companion establishments report genetic proof of Salmonella enterica lineage Para C and Borrelia recurrentis in Napoleonic troopers from Vilnius, indicating paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever had been present through the 1812 retreat.
Napoleon assembled about 500,000–600,000 troopers to invade Russia in 1812. After arriving in Moscow with out decisively defeating the Russian military, the Napoleonic forces discovered themselves remoted in a ruined metropolis and initiated a retreat to determine winter encampments alongside the border with Poland.
Retreat from Russia spanned October 19 to December 14, 1812 and resulted in huge losses attributed by historians to chilly, starvation, and ailments. Physicians and officers documented typhus, diarrhea, dysentery, fevers, pneumonia, and jaundice.
Previous stories described physique lice in Vilnius stays and PCR-based claims of Rickettsia prowazekii and Bartonella quintana utilizing brief fragments, alongside Anelloviridae in different troopers from Kaliningrad.
In the research, “Paratyphoid Fever and Relapsing Fever in 1812 Napoleon’s Devastated Army,” published on the pre-print server bioRxiv, researchers recovered and sequenced historic DNA from the tooth of troopers who doubtless died from infectious ailments to determine pathogens that might have contributed to their deaths.
The sampling drew on 13 intact tooth from completely different people recovered from a mass grave in Vilnius, Lithuania related to the December 1812 retreat, from a website with a minimal of three,269 exhumed people. No battle trauma was noticed on the website.
Initial evaluation flagged fourteen potential pathogens. Salmonella enterica and Borrelia recurrentis confirmed the strongest indicators. Four troopers (87A, 92B, 95A and 97B) yielded between roughly 30 and 970 distinctive DNA fragments matching the Paratyphi C pressure, with read-mismatch patterns indicating genuine historic bacterial DNA.
Sample 93A produced about 4,060 distinctive fragments protecting the chromosome and all seven plasmids of B. recurrentis, whereas 92B contributed round 320 distinctive reads and 18 confirmed hits after detailed filtering.
Phylogenetic placement positioned all Salmonella sequences firmly throughout the Paratyphi C lineage, a pathogen identified to trigger paratyphoid fever. No authenticated DNA matches Rickettsia prowazekii or Bartonella quintana. While no authenticated reads for R. prowazekii or B. quintana had been discovered, the authors notice this doesn’t rule out their presence on account of limitations of historic DNA preservation.
Authors conclude that paratyphoid fever lineage Para C and louse-borne relapsing fever had been present amongst Napoleonic troopers through the 1812 retreat.
Historical testimony described widespread diarrhea and consumption of salted beets and brine alongside the path to Vilnius, according to a foodborne route for paratyphoid fever.
A state of affairs of fatigue, chilly, and overlapping infections doubtless contributed to mortality. Analysis of a bigger variety of samples is advisable to outline the complete spectrum of epidemic ailments on the website, and a phylogeny-driven authentication workflow is offered for ultra-low-coverage pathogen historic DNA.
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More data:
Rémi Barbieri et al, Paratyphoid Fever and Relapsing Fever in 1812 Napoleon’s Devastated Army, bioRxiv (2025). DOI: 10.1101/2025.07.12.664512
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Citation:
Napoleon’s doomed retreat: DNA from Vilnius mass grave reveals indicators of foodborne and lice-borne fever ( 5)
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