When Napoleon and his legion of multinational soldiers retreated from Russia in 1812 in the face of dwindling supplies and fierce Russian resistance, little did they know how much worse was yet to come.

While withdrawing from Russia, at least half of the 600,000-strong force were ravaged by the extremes of winter, starvation, and disease. A new study has now identified which pathogens helped decimate the weakened forces.

"It's very exciting to use a technology we have today to detect and diagnose something that was buried for 200 years," says metagenomics researcher Nicolás Rascovan of the Institut Pasteur in France.

Physicians at the time documented typhus , with symptoms that include fevers , headaches, and rashes. But researchers found no traces of the bacterium Rickettsia pr

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