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Article: How 'invisible army' defeated Napoleon.(Daily Break)
- Article from:
- The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
- Article date:
- July 12, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 The Virginian Pilot-Ledger Star. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Dialog Corporation by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Alexander F. Remington
The Washington Post
Napoleon's Grande Armee was a marching city-state, a multinational force of more than half a million that set out to conquer Russia in May 1812. By December, nearly everyone was dead. According to Stephan Talty, typhus was the main reason.
A fast-paced sketch of this disastrous campaign, "The Illustrious Dead" is a military history that treats typhus as an invisible army on the battlefield, silently slaughtering hundreds of thousands of French soldiers, frustrating Napoleon's ambition, weakening his reign and changing the course of European history.
The narrative shifts between war history ...