By MIKE MAGEE
In 1872, English mathematician and sometimes poet, Augustus de Morgan, wrote this catching rhyme: “Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.”
This truism about competition among species for access to nutrition and reproduction could have come in handy to Napoleon 60 years earlier when he tragically underestimated his enemies will to live. It wasn’t so much the stubborn Russians as it was microbes that were his undoing.
When he launched his invasion with a staggering force of 615,000 men, 200,0...
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