The Russian campaign, after Minard: a homage in motion

In 1869, Charles Joseph Minard drew what became of Napoleon's army in Russia. Here, his map comes to life: this is, word for word, what the animation tells.

See the animated map

Four parts

• The map explained
  Nine points, each on a detail of the original: what Minard drew, and how to read it.
• The chronology
  Twenty-four steps, from the crossing of the Niemen to the return: each with the animated map that day, a painting of the time, and its sources.
• The context
  Europe in 1812, the tsar, the cost of the campaign: what the map does not say.
• Making-of: how this animation came to be
  Ten days, one person and an AI: the exchanges, as they happened.

The author's note

Where the data comes from

Everything the animation shows is fetched live, from where it lives:

• Minard's figures, as Michael Friendly digitized them for his Re-Visions of Minard: three tables (the army's path and strength, the cities, the temperatures of the retreat), from the Rdatasets collection (the R package HistData).
• Minard's original map and the paintings, from Wikimedia Commons: public domain, each credited at its step, with a link to its page.
• The rivers, from Natural Earth (public domain), simplified, and bent with the map.
• The fonts, from Google Fonts (SIL Open Font License): Old Standard TT for the text, IM Fell for the map's lettering, Bodoni Moda and Space Grotesk for the two years of the title.

The states of the downloads, and a way to fetch them again: Data and downloads, under the gear.