On foot, the expedition trudged through the frozen deserts of the Antarctic, marching for caches of food and kerosene deposited on the way.

[citation needed] The story is often told of Napoleon's men freezing in the bitter Russian Winter, their clothes falling apart as tin pest ate the buttons.

This appears to be an urban legend, as there is no evidence of any failing buttons, and thus they cannot have been a contributing factor in the failure of the invasion.

[11] In the event, none of the many survivors' tales mention problems with buttons and it has been suggested that the legend is an amalgamation of reports of blocks of Banca tin completely disintegrated in a customs warehouse in St. Petersburg in 1868, and earlier Russian reports that cast-in buttons for military uniforms also disintegrated,[13][10] and the desperate state of Napoleon's army, having turned soldiers into ragged beggars.

[11][14] With the 2006 adoption of the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) regulations in the European Union, California banning most uses of lead, and similar regulations elsewhere, the problem of tin pest has returned,[15] since some manufacturers which previously used tin/lead alloys now use predominantly tin-based alloys.

In cold environments, this can change to α-modification grey tin, which is not electrically conductive, and falls off the leads.