Napoleon’s March
From Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,” this chart by Charles Joseph Minard is a depiction of Napoleon’s forces on their way in and out of Russia in the winter of 1812.
We recently took a look at this chart as a fantastic example of a multivariate display or one that manages to pack multiple variables into a single diagram. This one is particularly awesome because it does the job so well. The narrative below the chart describes it a bit better, but the basic gist is that the large band shows the size of Napoleon’s forces as they marched to (light) and from (dark) Moscow during the 1812 campaign. Minard layers this over a map to better show you where Napoleon’s forces were when changes in size occured. Not only are location and force size mapped, but you can also find time, distance, and temperature information as well. But just look at how thin the returning line is. Hitler made the same mistake as Napoleon over 100 years later!
The lesson here is to never, ever invade Russia during the winter.