Minard's Map of Napoleon's Russian Campaign, 1812
Charles Minard's celebrated 1869 flow map tracing the advance and catastrophic retreat of Napoleon's Grande Armée during the 1812 invasion of Russia.
Drawn in 1869 by the retired French engineer Charles Joseph Minard, this single figure has been called the finest statistical graphic ever produced. The pale band shows Napoleon's Grande Armée marching east — some 422,000 men — while the black band charts its ruinous retreat, the ribbon narrowing mile by mile as cold, hunger and Russian attacks took their toll until barely 10,000 recrossed the Niemen. A temperature scale runs along the bottom, plunging toward −30° on the Réaumur scale. The 1812 disaster shattered Napoleon's power and set Europe on the road to the Congress of Vienna.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
