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eagereyesTV: Minard’s Famous “Napoleon’s March” Chart – What It Shows, What It Doesn’t

Robert Kosara / March 14, 2021

eagereyesTV: Minard’s Famous “Napoleon’s March” Chart – What It Shows, What It Doesn’t

This chart is a staple in every visualization course and many visualization talks. But what does it show, and what does it leave out? There’s a lot more to Napoleon’s Russian Campaign and to Charles Minard’s work than this one chart. My new video looks beyond the surface of what is perhaps the most famous chart out there.

In the video, I explain what the chart shows (it’s actually a map, but I keep calling it a chart) and how it works. But more than that, I’m looking at what Minard did not include. He had to simplify things significantly to make the chart work. But because the chart is so well known now, that means that we’re missing the complete other side of that war (the Russian military and militias fighting the French), and the civilian toll.

People also like to tell stories about certain points on the map, some of which are provably false. What I’m hoping to do with this video is show some of the context of the chart and data, and debunk one particularly egregious (but very compelling) false story: that of the crossing of the Berezina River near Studenka where thousands of soldiers supposedly fell through the ice.

You can watch the video over on YouTube or right here.

I’ve written about the need to reduce the amount of data shown to tell a story before (using Minard’s chart even). An important source has also been Menno-Jan Kraak’s book, Mapping Time, as well as Sandra Rendgen’s The Minard System (which makes an appearance in the video).

I have changed the format of my videos slightly and picked new music for the intro and outro (there’s also a little Easter egg at the very end). Let me know what you think! I think I’m also going to stop bugging people to like and subscribe in the video, but I would of course highly appreciate it if you did so!

Filed Under: Blog 2021 Tagged With: eagereyesTV

Robert Kosara is Data Visualization Developer at Observable. Before that, he was Research Scientist at Tableau Software (2012–2022) and Associate Professor of Computer Science (2005–2012). His research focus is the communication of data using visualization. In addition to blogging, Robert also runs and tweets. Read More…

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Menno-Jan Kraak says

    April 19, 2021 at 12:13 pm

    Robert,

    Very nice video. Enjoyed it. Also just publish a ‘similar’ essay titled ‘the best map ever? in the International Cartographic Journal https://doi.org/10.1080/23729333.2021.1909404

    MJ

    Reply
    • Robert Kosara says

      April 20, 2021 at 7:10 am

      Very interesting article, thanks for posting this! I had a mention of your book in the script at some point, but I ended up dropping it to keep it from getting too long… now I realize your story would have been perfect to include.

      Reply
  2. Alex Telea says

    December 8, 2021 at 3:04 pm

    Robert,

    Thanks for this blog. The issue with the Minard map is IMO far worse: the data is pretty badly faked. I happen to have been interested in Napoleonic history and thus read e.g. the memoirs of A. de Caulaincourt [basically Napoleon’s ministry of exterior], published in various editions, the one I have is from ~1933 (Plon Eds., France). The numbers being given there are definitely different than what Minard shows. Also, there are many pointers in history literature indicating that sizeable contingents left Russia and returned to Poland during the campaign / moved North with Bernadotte and others. Even worse, Minard got his data from Thiers, de Ségur, de Fezensac, and de Chambray. Thiers and de Fezensac and de Chambray are, if anything, _not_ people who would have wished to report correct facts about Napoleon [a simple history check shows their credentials]. The annotation of 10K soldiers leaving Russia (end of thin black line) is a complete fake – even Russian sources of that time, let alone official records (Le Moniteur), and many other historians (e.g. Castelot) all list around 23K-30K soldiers returning.
    Of course, nice drawing. But it shows fake data. So we should be aware of this.

    Reply
    • Robert Kosara says

      December 10, 2021 at 8:35 am

      Interesting! I know that there are some discrepancies, but I had just assumed that the data at the time was incomplete rather than biased on purpose. This is a great lesson in always having to question the sources of the data, even when it’s inconvenient or difficult.

      Reply

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