Multiple diseases may have devastated Napoleon’s army in 1812

Napoleon Bonaparte is depicted in the 1812 "Portrait of Napoleon I" by Charles Auguste Steuben. Photo Josse/Leemage/Corbis/Getty Images

Near the end of his reign, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte led an army of over half a million men in an invasion of Russia in 1812. Six months later, after the army was forced to retreat, an estimated tens of thousands of his soldiers made it back to France.

Known as one of the costliest wars in history, the death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers has been attributed to battle, as well as starvation, cold and a typhus epidemic that broke out.

Now, researchers have found evidence in the DNA remains of the soldiers that there may have been multiple diseases that devastated the army, including two previously undetected types of bacteria. The st