at the Berezina River near the town of Studianka, with a symbol, a yellow dot. It defines the bridge’s location in longitude and latitude and lists its attributes, such as the material used to make it. It bears a time stamp, which establishes the point at which the information was considered valid.
Within a map, time can have various aspects, as figure I-2b shows. One aspect reveals the map’s topic. Another reveals the age of the document itself. Still another bears the age of the data used to make up the map’s content. These shifting aspects of time change the questions cartographers must ask in order to build the map. Of its topic, we might ask if this topic refers to past, present, or future phenomena. Turning to its age, we might ask if this a historical map, a recent map, or a current map. Finally, answering when a map’s data was collected changes the way we understand other aspects like where, why, and how. Time refers not only to map elements but to process, too. This suggests questions about the moment of data collection, map design, or display. Some aspects of time may not even occur to most map users who probably are not aware of the time gaps that separate map production phases that affect their “real-time” content. Yet all these factors change the way in which a map represents time.
Figure I-2. Maps and time. Maps represent geographic objects using symbols. Time presents many faces in maps. The moment in time represented could be a historical event, current situation, or future infrastructure plan. A map’s age matters, too, for a chart drawn two centuries ago differs significantly from an online map just recently made. People expect up-to-date, real-time content in their contemporary maps, although even in these they must tolerate some delay between data collecting, design, and display.
1
Napoleon’s Russian campaign
Napoleon’s march to Moskva (Moscow) was only one of the many campaigns he executed as part of his strategy to expand, control, and sustain his French Empire. With this objective in mind, he changed alliances regularly—with the exception of Britain, which remained his archenemy and an obstacle to his ambition. Britain’s defeat eluded him. He knew that he could not take the island country by force because, while France ruled the continent, Britain ruled the seas. In a political effort to defeat his adversary, Napoleon established the Continental System blockade in 1806. He hoped that the new political order it created would defeat Britain economically by halting all of its commerce with the French empire and its allies.
With the peace treaty of Tilsit (now Sovetsk) in July 1807, Napoleon reached his zenith. The event provides an example of the changing alliances that Napoleonic expansion prompted. After the battle of Friedland (now Pravdinsk), a short distance south of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), Prussia lost much of its territory to the new Duchy of Poland and both states effectively became vassals of France. Russia, which fought on Prussia’s side against France, had to agree to join Napoleon’s Continental System, which effectively made it a French ally. This new relationship proved shaky, however, because Napoleon and the Russian ruler, Tsar Alexander, remained suspicious of one another. The cession of large parts of Galicia to Poland in 1810, for example, worried the Tsar, as did the French emperor’s annexation of Holland and large parts of northwest Germany, including Oldenburg, whose duke, a brother-in-law of the Tsar, had been expelled. At the same time, Napoleon married the daughter of the Austrian emperor, establishing another new alliance that worried the Russian monarch. Napoleon accused Alexander of breaking the Continental System, which created diplomatic tension between the two states.
Preparations for war in both Russia and France began in 1810. The Russians seem to have been divided on how and where to defend against the expected invasion. Napoleon had to prepare the largest logistical operation of his military career. In order to attack Russia, the French military would have to supply over 500,000 soldiers and more than 100,000 animals, mostly horses and oxen.
Napoleon began to concentrate his armies in Eastern Europe and amass supplies in cities like Danzig (now Gdansk). He also undertook a study of earlier invasions of Russia, like the one led by the Swedish king Charles VII in 1708.
Figure 1-1 compares the political situation in the territory affected by Napoleon’s Russian campaign between 1812 and 2012. It also highlights the area’s historical and current place names. Figure 1-2 shows one of the first maps devoted to Napoleon’s Russian campaign.
Napoleon recruited soldiers from all parts of the European continent, as figure 1-3 shows. The conscript system enlisted men from France and its incorporated territories, while the Continental System obligated allied nations to supply troops from elsewhere in Europe. Historians do not fully agree upon the sizes of both armies. Estimates vary, depending on whether one counts only fighting units, or includes supporting units as well. Commanders expected organizational units to possess a certain number of soldiers; however, they could not be sure whether these units ever attained their theoretical strength. Estimating strength grew even more difficult as the campaign progressed, and the army suffered losses from battle, desertion, and disease. (The statistics used in this book represent averages of many figures cited from diverse sources. Adam Zamoyski’s book 1812 [2004] and the books of Digby Smith [2002, 2004] provided guidance in understanding them.)
Figure 1-1. The theater of war. The land between Poland and Moskva showing past and current boundaries.
Figure 1-2. Napoleon’s 1812 campaign. This may be the first published map to trace the routes taken by Napoleon’s army during its march to Moskva and retreat.
Napoleon organized the French army into different corps. He commanded the main body— 180,000 strong— which consisted of his Imperial Guard, I, II, and III Corps and I and II Cavalry Corps. His stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, who commanded the 85,000 soldiers of IV and VI Corps and III Cavalry Corps, supported the French emperor from the south. Together, they opposed the main Russian army—105,000 strong—under Field Marshal Mikhail Barclay de Tolly. To the north, the 32,000 soldiers that comprised X Corps faced the 10,000 Russians soldiers in the Riga Corps, whose numbers were strengthened by troops from Finland. Napoleon’s brother Jerome commanded the V, VII, and VIII Corps and the VI Cavalry Corps, 75,000 in all, which marched against the Second Russian Army (which numbered 48,000) under General Pyotr Bagration. Farther south, 50,000 Austrians soldiers under General Karl Schwarzenberg faced the 45,000-strong Third Russian Army under General Aleksandr Petrovich Tormasov.
The landscape of the 1812 campaign appears unspectacular. It consisted mainly of undulating terrain divided by rivers like the Dzvina in campaign territory’s north, the Dnjepr and Berezina in the center, and Prypyats in the south. However, while the land leading to Moskva posed few obstacles, the land to the north was largely forested, and the land to the south contained many lakes and swamps. Moreover, Russia possessed a lower population density, so living off the land would prove to be much more difficult than anything the French army had ever experienced during earlier campaigns in Western and Central Europe. Napoleon invaded when the Russian grain harvest was not yet ready so the military’s animals were not properly fed, causing illness and death. Inside Russia, he discovered that the country’s infrastructure was poorly developed. The forests allowed few roads and the swamps proved difficult to pass. The rivers usually posed minor obstacles, except during the wet season when they became difficult to cross. When the rains fell, the roads became nearly impassable, especially for the heavy supply trains. And then there was the weather. Russia’s climate, with its extreme heat and cold, savaged armies. During their campaign, Napoleon’s troops had to deal with all these extremes, although the severe cold did not descend on the land until early November. Most weather-related casualties manifested in diseases like typhoid.
