Post by SolomonWI think people here might find this report on Napoleon’s Grande Armée mass
grave recently examined interesting.
[sight]
It was not "recently", unless 15 years is nothing in your time flow. :-)
Post by SolomonWIt confirms that the winter was cold and it was not exaggerated the
harshness of the winter and that many soldiers died starvation and typhus.
How many times did I have to recommend you to study things before getting
excited? :-)
As usually, you are confused about the issue. NOBODY EVER denied that the
weather was cold at the time WHEN the leftovers of the Great Army reached
Vilno. This is a well-known fact which is probably beyond any reasonable
disputation. You have to get a map and to look at the distance between
Moscow and Vilno and also find out how many days did it take for the Great
Army to get from one point to another.
Even when Napoleon reached Berezina, the ice did not quite set: there was a
need to build a bridge and when people tried to cross river by ice it broke.
Both by the Russian and French accounts weather during most of the way from
Moscow (before reaching Lithuania) was not too different from a winter in
Paris. The problems for the French was that they had not been prepared even
to that: no food, no forage for the horses, the shoes had been worn out by the
time of Borodino Battle, no winter horseshoes had been provided except for the
imperial household, etc.
Actually, short of the horseshoes issue, Russian army was suffering from most
of the listed above problems and had comparable losses on its way westward:
when the weather is slightly below 0C and you don't have adequate footwear and
a good overcoat, and are routinely starving, and have to sleep in a snow near
the camp fire, you are in a BIG trouble. Napoleon's army had been operating
in the summer uniforms (and I'm not sure that they had adequate winter uniforms
to start with) but even the Russian troops were not getting their winter
uniforms (heavy overcoats, woolen trousers, etc.) in time and in the needed
numbers, thus suffering heavy losses from cold. Of course, they had a greater
(but not too great) opportunity to be transported into some inhabitable
places but not too many of those had been left along the route. The French
had been surrendering en mass in the same expectations of being fed and
placed somewhere reasonably comfortable. By the end of the 1812 campaign even
the Russian Guards were not receiving the rations for days and there are
rather bizarre descriptions of what the Russian troops ended up wearing.
AFAIK, nobody ever denied the mass deaths from starvation (actually, there were numerous references to it, both French and Russian) and typhus is what
you have to expect with a prolonged absence of an elementary hygiene. And when
you just pile the sick, dirty, starving people in the congested rooms on a
dirty straw you have the "ideal" conditions for an outbreak.
By the time they reached Vilno, a big percentage of the lucky ones had been
in such a state that they simply could not go anywhere further and, with the
city lacking the necessary accommodations, adequate medical services and supplies and simply enough of food, many of them ended up dead within days.
Actually, at least the 1st article on your list says the same thing that I
wrote above, it is just that you did misunderstood the text by the reason
that I mentioned at the beginning. Of course, claim that 70K made it to
Vilno is probably exaggerated (probably closer to 40K with the stragglers)
but perhaps author(s) had been talking about the summary numbers including
the wings and not just those who came to Vilno.
Post by SolomonWAlso surprisingly there were a lot of women with Napoleon’s army.
Sorry, but if you did not know THIS, you don't know the basics. Of course,
there were plenty of them. Napoleon's army heavily relied on the female
entrepreneurs (vivandières ?) following the troops and providing food and
drink, laundry services, mending the uniforms, giving the rudimentary medical
help, buying the loot, etc. Link http://armflot.ru/index.php/epokha-napoleona/522-markitantki-velikoj-armii will not help you with the description
(unless you recently learned Russian) but it contains a number of contemporary
depictions to illustrate an idea.
Plus, quite a few officers (especially those of a higher rank) took with them
their wives (which means, there were female servants of the wives as well).
Then, on a way back they picked up some French civilians who lived in Moscow
and had reasonable fears about staying there after Grand Army left.
Post by SolomonWhttp://www.helsinki.fi/arkeologia/kurssit/KAR331_Forensinen_sl2008/Jankauskas_1.pdf
http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFH0004822/Pelier_Serenela_M_201504_BA.pdf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/07/25/skeletons-of-napoleons-soldiers-in-mass-grave-show-signs-of-starvation/#6dd930183743