6 ms·
Show HN: Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia
- justignore 12y agoFascinating! Nice to see it in both an overlay and in a sense of time.
- dangoldin 12y agoTufte wrote a ton about this map for those interested: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard
- hentrep 12y agoWhat is the y-axis supposed to represent in the graph? Not to nitpick, but a y-axis title would be helpful. EDIT: I assume it represents Napoleon's army. If so, that spike in December is interesting, and presumably represents reinforcements?
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoYou can mouse over a point on either the map or the graph to highlight the corresponding point on the other. Based on that, the spike in late November appears to represent the main army rejoining a group that split off during the outbound march.
- SuperChihuahua 12y agoAs you can see in this graph, Napoleon split up his army and left a small part behind while he walked towards Moscow. It's the remainings from this smaller army that represents this spike
- adestefan 12y agoIt's a map, not a graph so there is no y-axis. The colored area represents the size of the army with the gold area being March to Moscow and the black being the retreat. There were two small groups that split from the main thrust. The black are them rejoining the retreat. As you can see you were luck if you were in one of those two groups since they did not get decimated.
- masswerk 12y agoSee http://www.masswerk.at/minard http://www.masswerk.at/minard for a translation of the map's original legend (mouseover). There wasn't just a single movement of the army, but several troops were detached or left behind and rejoined later in the campaign. There's also a bit of a simplification in the map, as was pointed out by Minard, in order to provide the bigger picture of the events in the flow chart.
- knoepfle 12y agoThis is cool as heck, thanks.
- gry 12y agoCharles Minard [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard] contributed amazing work to several fields, information graphics most notably. Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. The graphic is notable for its representation in two dimensions of six types of data: the number of Napoleon's troops; distance; temperature; the latitude and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates. Fantastic work. Thank you. It's great to see in-situ.
- avodonosov 12y agoWhat do these rectangles mean? There are lot of different looking maps of this war in Internet, a random one: http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/6214/33778531.0/0_733c6_774203a4_orig http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/6214/33778531.0/0_733c6_77420...
- boombip 12y agoThe rectangles represent the number of men on Napoleon's Grand Army during his march on, and subsequent retreat from, Moscow.
- cturner 12y agoIt would be interesting to know more about the logistics of running a mobile army in that era. I'd guess it would be hard work even to get hold of adequate maps for the regions you might decide to move into. Even with maps, you'd still face problems of trying to predict where food would be available as you moved forward.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- maxst 12y agoWorth to notice that Napoleon lost most of the army in August and September. He expected plenty of food during harvest season, not the scorched-earth tactics.