Historical data visualization · 1869
Charles Joseph Minard: Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813
Paris · 20 November 1869
Minard’s 1869 map of the French army in Russia in 1812-1813, its width drawn to scale of the men left.
Read the text The whole poster as a web page
Part of the series The first data visualizations.
- Print from
- A3
- License
- Public domain (map); notice: MIT
- Retrieved
- 27 September 2026
- Language
- French
- Rights holder
- Charles Joseph Minard, 1869
Theme
Download
- A seriesPrints at A0, A1, A2 or A3
- 50 × 70 cm
- 60 × 80 cm
US formats
Each one laid out on its own. At Letter and Tabloid the body of a long text prints under 8 pt: they suit short texts, or a copy to read up close.
- Letter8.5 × 11 in
- Tabloid11 × 17 in
- 18 × 24 in
- 24 × 36 in
Print it Which size, paper or aluminium, which file to send
Every Historical data visualization poster, in the A, 50 × 70 and 60 × 80 cm formats and every theme, as one zip from the latest release, and in the US formats as another.
Print from A3: the smallest A size at which the body text is at least 8 pt.
Wallpaper
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Edition
Minard’s own copy at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (Fol. 10975, recueil “Tableaux graphiques et cartes figuratives”, view 52: two maps on one sheet, Regnier & Dourdet), scanned by the Bibliothèque nationale de France for Héritage des ponts et chaussées (ark:/12148/btv1b10484829h, 7888 x 5952 px). The poster shows the lower map only, cropped to its frame (the map of Hannibal’s march above it is left out), straightened by 0.26 degree, reduced to 4234 px and with its paper tone scaled to white (one gain per channel). Until September 2026 the poster used the copy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Cartes et plans, GE DON-4182, Gallica btv1b52504201x), against which the text was first read; the two are the same printing. The text is transcribed from the BnF scan: the legend under the title, set in two paragraphs as on the map, the heading of the temperature chart and the note at its left. The title, author line and date of the map are in the header. The rule that separates two sentences of the legend is set as a dash; “M.M.” and “zônes” are kept as written; “l’œil” is read with the ligature, which cannot be told from joined script; the title’s “1812~1813” is set with a hyphen. The labels on the map (places, numbers of men, temperatures and dates) are not transcribed. No transcription of the legend was found to compare with: it was read on the scan word by word. The notice below the legend is not a period text: it was written for this poster from the map itself and the Gallica record (Minard’s dates, the printer, the two maps on one sheet).
Rights
Charles Joseph Minard died in 1870 and the map was published in 1869: it is in the public domain in France and in the United States. The scan is marked “Source : Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées”, whose reuse page (https://heritage.ecoledesponts.fr/enpc/content/reutiliser-nos-collections) puts such content under the Licence Ouverte Etalab, commercial reuse included, with the credit “École nationale des ponts et chaussées”.
The notice written for the poster is covered by the MIT license of this repository.
