[p. 28] Important as these various improvements were, it has to be conceded that the period from the early eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century showed a remarkable stability in military technology. The tools of land warfare in the most important branch, infantry, remained essentially unchanged, and cavalry weapons remained equally stable. As for artillery the substantial progress in material loading, and aiming, created new tactical possibilities for the more mobile guns. Now they could keep pace with the changing tactical requirements of a battle and be, deployed at the decisive point, where outranging musketry, they could produce a very substantial volume of fire. Even so, as a rule this was insufficient to challenge the supremacy of infantry. There now were three major combatant arms, but infantry remained the queen of battle. [p. 237] The most spectacular and substantial results of disease during this period was the decimation of Napoleon's Grand Army in Russia. The army, totaling upward of half a million men assembled in cantonments from northern Germany to Italy. Until the main body entered Lithuania and Poland there was little sickness, then the situation deteriorated rapidly. The summer of 1812 was unusually hot, water scarce and bad, and the disease rate for typhus, typhoid, dysentery, and enteric fever reached epidemic proportions. In the first five weeks, Napoleon lost over a third of his troops. Several battle losses compounded the situation, and during the retreat exhaustion and pneumonia added their toll and finished off the army. But this was not all. When Napoleon raised a new army in 1813, the young recruits were particularly susceptible to infection and by the time he stood at Leipzig, preliminary battles and disease had reduced his force to little over 170,000 men against 200,000 allied troops, One estimate is that 105,000 were lost through combat and 219,000 to disease in the months before Leipzig. More Rothenberg From Fighting Nazis to Teaching Napoleonic History Excerpts: The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon Excerpts: Napoleon's Great Adversary: Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army 1792-1814 Back to Table of Contents -- Napoleon #14 Back to Napoleon List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Napoleon LLC. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. The full text and graphics from other military history magazines and gaming magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com Order Napoleon magazine direct