Battle of Austerlitz

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Austerlitz, fought on the 2nd of December 1805, began with a French army that was outnumbered, tired, and deliberately pretending to be weaker than it was. Napoleon had around 72,000 men and 157 guns; the Allies had roughly 85,000 soldiers and 318 guns. By the time darkness fell, the Allied army had lost about 36,000 men, roughly 38 percent of its entire force. What the listener will discover is how one commander turned apparent disadvantage into a trap, how the morning mist over a gently sloping hill called the Pratzen Heights became the hinge on which an empire turned, and why a battle fought in what is now the Czech Republic still echoes across Paris, Utrecht, and the pages of Leo Tolstoy.

• 2. The Road to Austerlitz

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  Europe had been at war, in one form or another, since 1792. Two coalitions had already collapsed against French power. A third formed in the spring of 1805 when British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger managed to bring Russia and then Austria into a new alliance against France. Napoleon, who had assembled a 150,000-strong invasion force called the Armée d'Angleterre at camps around Boulogne, turned those men eastward in August 1805 instead.

  On the 25th of September, 200,000 French troops crossed the Rhine along a front of 260 kilometres. The move was swift and secret. Austrian General Karl Mack had gathered the greater part of his army at Ulm in Swabia, and Napoleon swung south in a wheeling manoeuvre to cut off their retreat. On the 20th of October, 23,000 Austrian troops surrendered at Ulm, raising the total Austrian prisoners from the campaign to 60,000. The very next day, a Franco-Spanish fleet was destroyed at Trafalgar, a defeat that left the sea in British hands. Still, Vienna fell in November, and the French captured 100,000 muskets, 500 cannons, and bridges across the Danube intact.

  Tsar Alexander I appointed General Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov commander-in-chief of the combined Russo-Austrian force. Kutuzov arrived at the front on the 9th of September 1805, quickly spotting flaws in Austrian planning, which he called "very dogmatic". He favoured a further retreat, drawing the French away from their supply lines toward terrain more favourable to the Allies. Had he been followed, Archduke Charles's army could have reinforced from Italy, and Prussia might have joined the Coalition. But Kutuzov's advice was about to be ignored by the man who outranked him.

• 3. Napoleon's Trap

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  About 53,000 French troops, including the forces of Soult, Lannes, and Murat, were visible to Allied scouts and appeared to hold the Olmütz road. The Allies, numbering around 89,000, saw what looked like a weakened, nervous adversary asking for peace. What they could not see was that Marshals Bernadotte, Mortier, and Davout were already within striking distance, ready to march and raise French numbers to 75,000.

  On the 25th of November, Napoleon sent General Savary to Allied headquarters at Olmütz. Savary carried a message expressing Napoleon's wish to avoid battle. The real purpose was reconnaissance. When Emperor Francis offered an armistice on the 27th, Napoleon accepted with obvious enthusiasm. On the same day he ordered Marshal Soult to abandon Austerlitz and the commanding Pratzen Heights, staging a chaotic retreat designed to make the Heights look like a prize the Allies could seize.

  On the 28th of November, Napoleon requested a personal meeting with Tsar Alexander. Instead of the Tsar, he received Prince Peter Dolgorukov, described as the Tsar's most impetuous aide. Napoleon performed hesitation and anxiety in front of this visitor, knowing the report would travel straight back to Alexander. The performance worked. Franz von Weyrother, the Austrian chief of staff, championed an immediate attack, and the Tsar's court shifted behind him. Kutuzov's plan to retreat to the Carpathians was rejected. The Allied army would fight on Napoleon's chosen ground, on the timetable Napoleon had set, on terrain Napoleon had already studied and mapped in his mind.

• 4. Dawn on the Pratzen Heights

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  At about 8 a.m. on the 2nd of December, the first Allied lines hit the village of Telnitz, defended by the 3rd Line Regiment. The early fighting was fierce: the Allies pushed the French across the Goldbach stream, then the leading men of Davout's corps arrived and threw them back, only to be pushed out again by hussars. Further north, the village of Sokolnitz, held by the 26th Light Regiment and French skirmishers called the Tirailleurs, changed hands repeatedly and became the most contested ground on the battlefield.

  Davout's soldiers had been given 48 hours to march 110 kilometres from Vienna. They arrived in time to defend the stretched right flank against Buxhoeveden's 43,000 troops, though they numbered at first only 5,000 and later 12,500. Their stubborn defence was possible partly because the right flank's terrain, a complicated system of streams and lakes, slowed Allied momentum. Still, the pressure was immense.

  At about 8:45 a.m., the mist that had blanketed the slopes began to thin. Napoleon scanned the Pratzen Heights and liked what he saw: the Allied centre had been drained to feed the assault on his right. He asked Marshal Soult how long it would take his men to reach the Heights. "Less than twenty minutes, sire," Soult replied. About fifteen minutes later, Napoleon gave the order, adding the words: "One sharp blow and the war is over." The mist held just long enough to conceal Soult's advance up the slope. As the soldiers of St. Hilaire's division climbed, the sun broke through and the mist scattered. Russian troops on the Heights were stunned to find a French army rising out of the fog directly at them.

• 5. The Centre Collapses

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  Mikhail Kutuzov personally commanded at the section of the Allied line that bore Soult's assault. He had earlier tried to keep the IV Corps stationary on the Heights, recognising their importance. But Tsar Alexander, unwilling to associate himself with a plan that might fail, had stripped Kutuzov of his authority as commander-in-chief and handed it to Franz von Weyrother. The young Tsar then ordered IV Corps down from the Heights to reinforce the southern attack. That decision broke the Allied army's spine.

  General Vandamme's division, attacking an area the source calls Staré Vinohrady, meaning Old Vineyards, used skilled skirmishing and concentrated volleys to break several Allied battalions to the north of the Heights. Napoleon shifted his command post from Žuráň Hill to St. Anthony's Chapel on the Pratzen Heights itself. Grand Duke Constantine, Tsar Alexander's brother, counterattacked with the Russian Imperial Guard in Vandamme's sector, forcing a violent struggle and the only loss of a French standard in the entire battle: a battalion of the 4th Line Regiment was defeated.

  Napoleon responded by sending his own heavy Guard cavalry forward. French horse artillery then inflicted heavy casualties on Russian cavalry and fusiliers. Kutuzov was severely wounded during the fighting, and his son-in-law, Ferdinand von Tiesenhausen, was killed. When Drouet's Division deployed on the flank, French cavalry found refuge behind French infantry and regrouped; the Russians broke and were pursued for about a quarter of a mile.

• 6. The Frozen Ponds

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  As the French swept through the Allied centre and north, the southern columns still fighting around Sokolnitz and Telnitz faced a double assault from St. Hilaire's division and part of Davout's III Corps. The Allied commanders of the first two columns, Generals Kienmayer and Langeron, fled as fast as they could. Buxhoeveden, the commander responsible for the main Allied attack, was described as completely drunk and also fled, though Kienmayer covered the retreat with the O'Reilly light cavalry, who managed to defeat five of six French cavalry regiments before they too had to pull back.

  A large body of defeated Russian troops withdrew south toward Vienna across the frozen Satschan ponds. Napoleon deployed cannons on the heights of Augezd and opened fire. The ice broke. Men and horses fell into the cold water; Russian artillery pieces sank with them. Accounts of what happened at the ponds vary widely in the source: the guns captured may have numbered as few as 38 or more than 100, and the dead may have ranged from 200 to 2,000. A few days after the battle, Napoleon ordered the ponds drained. The water revealed the corpses of only two or three men and around 150 horses, suggesting his own account had been significantly exaggerated. Tsar Alexander I nonetheless confirmed the episode happened. Many drowning Russians were saved by their French pursuers.

  A single handwritten letter captures the mood on the French side. Napoleon wrote to Josephine: "I have beaten the Austro-Russian army commanded by the two emperors. I am a little weary.... I embrace you." The phrase "the two emperors" gave the battle its second name, though Napoleon was technically mistaken: Emperor Francis of Austria had not been present on the field.

• 7. Aftermath and Reckoning

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  France and Austria signed a truce on the 4th of December. On the 26th of December, the Treaty of Pressburg removed Austria from the war entirely. Austria agreed to recognise French territorial gains stretching back to the treaties of Campo Formio in 1797 and Lunéville in 1801. It ceded land to Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, all Napoleon's German allies, surrendered Venice to the Kingdom of Italy, and paid an indemnity of 40 million francs.

  In Paris, the news landed on a city that had been teetering toward financial collapse. Government bonds leaped from 45 to 66 percent of their face value on the news of the French victory. Napoleon rewarded his army that same night. He provided two million golden francs to higher officers and 200 francs to each soldier, with pensions for widows of the fallen and 6,000 francs for the widows of fallen generals. Orphaned children were adopted by Napoleon personally and were permitted to add "Napoleon" to their own names.

  The political consequences reached far beyond Vienna. Napoleon used the victory to create the Confederation of the Rhine, a belt of German states intended as a buffer between France and Prussia. Emperor Francis dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 after recognising it had been rendered functionally useless. Tsar Alexander blamed Kutuzov for the defeat, though Kutuzov had argued against the battle. The Prussians, alarmed by French expansion into Central Europe, went to war with France later in 1806. William Pitt, on hearing the news of Austerlitz, gestured toward a map of Europe and said: "Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years."

• 8. Memory and Monument

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  Since 1992, the area where the battle was fought has been protected by law as a landscape monument zone covering 19 municipalities, from Slavkov u Brna to Zbýšov. The Cairn of Peace Memorial near Prace, claimed to be the first peace memorial in Europe, was designed by Josef Fanta in the Art Nouveau style and built between 1910 and 1912. World War I delayed its dedication until 1923. The structure stands 26 metres high, square in plan, with four female statues representing France, Austria, Russia, and Moravia. Inside is a chapel with an ossuary.

  Leo Tolstoy placed the battle at the conclusion of Book 3 and Volume 1 of War and Peace, using it as a turning point for both the character Andrei Bolkonsky, who is badly wounded there, and for Nikolai Rostov. Prussian music critic E. T. A. Hoffmann, in his review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, singled out for mockery a French battle symphony by Louis Jadin celebrating the victory at Austerlitz.

  The battle entered French public space in stone and iron as well as in literature. The 44-metre-high bronze Colonne Vendôme in Paris was initially called the Column of Austerlitz and was said to have been cast from melted-down Allied gun barrels. The Pont d'Austerlitz and the Gare d'Austerlitz still carry the name in daily use. A scene from the battle appears on the bas-relief of the eastern pillar of the Arc de Triomphe. At the bicentennial in 2005, controversy arose when neither the French president nor the prime minister attended any commemorative functions, while residents of French overseas departments protested against what they saw as official celebration of Napoleon, arguing that Austerlitz should not be honoured given Napoleon's actions toward colonial peoples. The Pyramid of Austerlitz near Utrecht in the Netherlands, built by French soldiers stationed there, remains a quieter memorial, far from the debates of the French capital.