On December 2, 1805, Emperor Napoleon’s Grande Armée faced off against an allied Austro-Russian army near Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna, Czech Republic). By enticing the enemy to attack his understrength right flank, Napoleon struck at the enemy center. Napoleon’s bold tactics enabled his men to split the coalition army in two over the course of the bloody struggle. The Battle of Austerlitz, widely considered Napoleon’s tactical masterpiece, brought an end to the War of the Third Coalition and was a major milestone on Napoleon’s path to European domination by 1807.
The Sun of Austerlitz
At around 8:00 in the morning of December 2, 1805, Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov was waiting for his column to form up behind the village of Pratze (Prace) at the center of what would become the battlefield of Austerlitz. An impatient Tsar Alexander I rode up to him and asked why he was not advancing. When Kutuzov replied that he was not yet ready, the tsar said, “We are not on the parade ground, where one awaits the arrival of all the troops to begin the parade.” The veteran general answered back, “Sire, it is precisely because we are not on a parade ground that I do not begin… but if that is your order!” (Goetz, 2017, p.150)
Soon after Kutuzov issued his reluctant orders, the head of his column reported the presence of enemy infantry on their left marching towards the Pratzen Heights. They were the men of Marshal Soult’s IV Corps, whose presence had gone undetected under the cover of the morning mist in the shallow valley of the Goldbach stream. They had been given their orders around 15 minutes earlier by Napoleon, who intended them to deal the decisive blow that would win him the battle.
As the “Sun of Austerlitz” burned away the mist to reveal a mass of French infantrymen on both sides, the Russians and their Austrian allies quickly hurried back towards the heights. Although the French were surprised to encounter resistance and the Russians fought bravely, the superior cohesion of the French infantry allowed them to seize the position. There was still much fighting left in the day, but the tactical strike against the allied center foretold disaster for the Austrians and Russians.
The Third Coalition
The Allied Austro-Russian army that fought at Austerlitz was part of the Third Coalition formed as a result of British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger’s diplomatic initiative. Since the breakdown of the 1802 Treaty of Amiens between Britain and France in the spring of 1803, Napoleon had been making preparations to invade Britain by setting up a large army camp at Boulogne. Although Britain was protected by the English Channel and its mighty navy, both Pitt and Napoleon knew that if the latter could successfully land an army on the south coast of Britain, there was little to stop it from marching directly into London.
After Pitt returned to office in May 1804, the British government intensified its efforts to build an anti-Napoleonic coalition. While Russia and Austria were initially inclined to remain neutral, a series of developments changed the diplomatic calculus. The abduction and execution in March 1804 of the young French aristocrat, the Duc d’Enghien, appalled European heads of state. In May 1804, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor, directly challenging the status of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. The latter feared that Napoleon could claim his 1,000-year-old elective imperial title and assumed the additional title of Emperor of Austria in response.
Shortly before Napoleon’s coronation as emperor at Notre Dame on December 2, 1804, Austria signed a defensive alliance with Russia. A series of expansionist actions by Napoleon in northern Italy in early 1805 proved the final straw, and the Third Coalition brought together Britain, Austria, and Russia against Napoleon in the early summer of 1805.
The Road to Austerlitz
Napoleon was determined to launch his invasion of Britain in 1805 before Austria and Russia could mobilize to threaten France. However, his elaborate plan to evade the British naval blockade and gain control of the English Channel failed after Admiral Pierre-Charles de Villeneuve chose to retire to Cadiz after clashing inconclusively with Admiral Robert Calder’s fleet off Cape Finisterre in northern Spain in July.
While Calder faced court-martial in Britain for failing to pursue Villeneuve and destroy his fleet (a task accomplished by Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar on October 21), the latter’s retreat prompted Napoleon to call off his invasion of England. In response to 70,000 Austrians under General Karl Mack marching into Bavaria, Napoleon redesignated his Army of England as the Grande Armée in late August and ordered it to march east to confront Mack. His remarkable speed of march astonished the Austrian general, who made a few half-hearted attempts to break out from his position at Ulm. Although Mack was anticipating the arrival of Russian reinforcements under General Kutuzov, the Russians were nowhere to be seen, and Mack’s army surrendered to Napoleon on October 20.
When Kutuzov heard of Mack’s surrender, he hurried back along the Danube valley with a few thousand Austrians who escaped Napoleon’s encirclement intending to link up with Russian reinforcements from the east. To the consternation of his Austrian allies, Kutuzov abandoned Vienna to the French, while the talented Russian rearguard commander General Pyotr Bagration fought a series of delaying actions throughout November. On November 19, a month after Ulm, Kutuzov successfully joined up with General Fyodor Buxhöwden’s Russian corps and took up a position near Olmütz (Olomouc) in Moravia.
Choosing the Ground
Despite the disaster at Ulm, the Allies now had cause for optimism. Kutuzov was on equal terms with Napoleon, with 80,000 men and more Russian units days away. The Austrian Army of Italy under Archduke Charles was approaching from the south with another 80,000 men. Meanwhile, neutral Prussia had issued a 30-day ultimatum for Napoleon’s withdrawal from Austria and was due to enter the war in mid-December. Kutuzov was prepared to wait until overwhelming Allied numbers forced Napoleon to give up all his gains.
After the junction of the Allied forces, Napoleon’s offensive came to a halt at Brünn (Brno), the capital of Moravia. With his strategic outlook deteriorating and the French treasury on the verge of bankruptcy, Napoleon had to act fast. He was determined to draw the cautious Kutuzov into a pitched battle and determine the outcome of the campaign in his favor at a single stroke. In fact, Kutuzov had been overruled by Tsar Alexander and his entourage of ambitious young aristocrats, and on November 27, the Allies began an offensive to turn Napoleon’s right flank.
On November 29, Napoleon took up a position behind the Goldbach stream to the southeast of Brünn, some ten miles west of Austerlitz. This meant ordering Marshal Soult’s IV Corps to evacuate the Pratzen Heights, the most prominent feature in the area. Soult’s withdrawal encouraged the Allies that the French were planning to retreat. That evening, the Russian staff officer Prince Pyotr Dolgoruky met Napoleon at his headquarters to discuss proposals for an armistice. Dolgoruky returned to Allied headquarters, reporting that despite Napoleon’s dismissal of harsh Allied terms, the French were in no condition to fight.
Sokolnitz and Telnitz
The Allies took their time to maneuver into position, allowing Marshal Bernadotte to arrive with 12,000 men from I Corps while Marshal Davout was hurrying from Vienna with his III Corps. Following an Austrian attack on French outposts at Sokolnitz (Sokolnice), his extreme right (southern) flank on the night of December 1, Napoleon ordered Davout to march towards Sokolnitz. He now envisaged that Soult would strike the decisive below as the Allies marched off the Pratzen Heights.
The Allied battle plan, developed by Austrian chief of staff Franz Weyrother, involved striking at Sokolnitz and Telnitz (Telnice) with three columns under Buxhöwden’s overall command to roll up Napoleon’s right flank. Kutuzov, reduced to the command of a single column, would descend upon Kobelnitz (Kobylnice) towards the center, leaving only Bagration and the Russian Guards to defend the Pratzen Heights and the Brünn-Olmütz road.
The Battle of Austerlitz began at daybreak on December 2, 1805, the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation as emperor, as Austrian General Kienmayer attacked the French positions at Telnitz. Although Davout’s men had only arrived a few hours earlier, they made best use of the terrain and the village’s walled gardens to blunt the momentum of the Allied attack.
As three Russian columns under generals Dokhturov, Langeron, and Przhebishevsky lumbered their way down the slope of the heights towards Sokolnitz and Telnitz, still shrouded in the thick morning fog, they finally made use of the numerical advantage and crossed the Goldbach, and the Allies occupied both villages by 9:45. However, III Corps’ tenacious defense had given Soult the time he needed to advance on the heights.
The Fight for the Pratzen Heights
By 10 o’clock, the French were on the verge of splitting the Allied line into two. As Kutuzov desperately sought reinforcements, General Nikolai Kamensky retraced his steps and turned his brigade back to occupy the Pratzeberg at the crest of the ridge. The other Allied units in the sector included an Austrian column under Prince Moritz Liechtenstein, the Russian Advance Guard under Bagration, and the 10,000-strong Russian Guards under Grand Duke Constantine, Tsar Alexander’s younger brother and heir to the Russian throne.
The French forces in this sector included Marshal Bernadotte’s I Corps and Marshal Lannes’ V Corps, as well as the bulk of the French cavalry reserve under Marshal Murat. As Lannes advanced along the main road, seeking to exploit a gap that had opened up between Bagration and Liechtenstein, the Allied cavalry moved to close the gap and engage Lannes. The fight between Bagration and Lannes during the morning was primarily a cavalry duel. Lannes’ infantry advanced in the afternoon, pushing Bagration back along the road towards Olmütz and removing him from the main action.
As Constantine advanced his Guards, a fierce struggle ensued for control of Blaziowitz (Blažowice) at the center of the Allied line, and the French ultimately prevailed. A little further to the south, Kutuzov’s column struggled to maintain control of the hills of Pratzeberg and Stare Vinohrady on the Pratzen Heights. Although the Austrians and Russians offered fierce resistance, superior French marksmanship took its toll. Kamensky was driven from the Pratzeberg, and by 11, the Austrians had to give up Stare Vinohrady. Napoleon duly ordered his reserves to advance and established his new command post on the Stare Vinohrady.
The Battle of the Guards
Kutuzov ordered a withdrawal from the Pratzen Heights at around 11:30, though by noon, the Allied movements resembled more of a rout. For Napoleon, the battle was as good as won, but it remained for him to ensure that his enemy could not live to fight another day.
In order to gain time for a general retreat to the southeast, Constantine ordered his Guards cavalry to attack the Pratzeberg. In a rare exhibition of effective combined arms tactics from the Allies, the Russian Guard horse artillery targeted an infantry square of the 4th Line Regiment before the Horse Guards rode in to capture an eagle. The Russian Guard cavalry then put the adjacent 24th Light Regiment to flight.
From Stare Vinohrady, Napoleon observed these fleeing infantrymen shouting “Vive l’Empereur!” as they hurried past him. The emperor then ordered Marshal Bessières to bring up the Imperial Guard cavalry. Napoleon’s aide-de-camp, General Jean Rapp, took command of a force of Mamelukes (raised during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign) and Chasseurs à Cheval (mounted riflemen), which attacked a column of retreating Russian Guard infantry, routing a battalion of the Semenovsky Guards.
Constantine responded by sending in the Cavalier Guards, whose ranks were filled with the cream of the Russian aristocracy. Although they pushed back Rapp’s exhausted men and horses, Marshal Bessières appeared on the scene with four regiments of Grenadiers à Cheval (mounted grenadiers) and put the Russian Guard cavalry to flight. By 3 p.m., the Russian Guards had been decisively defeated.
The Collapse of the Allied Left
On the Allied left, the Allied columns had taken time to reform on the western bank of the Goldbach when they were surprised by a counterattack by General Louis Friant’s division. Amidst heavy fighting during which neither side gave an inch, General Buxhöwden and most of the Allied commanders were largely ignorant of the disaster unfolding behind them on the Pratzen Heights until noon.
Once informed of the events further north, the Allied commanders were seemingly paralyzed in the absence of new orders from Buxhöwden, who was reportedly drunk. General Langeron, a French émigré in Russian uniform, was the only Allied officer to show any initiative. He attempted to bring several Russian battalions to support Kamensky near the Pratzeberg, unaware of the fact that Kutuzov had ordered Kamensky to retreat.
At 12:30, Davout regrouped his tired men and went on the offensive, forcing Langeron to lead some of the men back toward Sokolnitz. With the Allies falling back from the Pratzen, Napoleon ordered Soult to march his men southwest down the slope to engage the disorganized Allied columns in the Goldbach valley. General Przhebishevsky’s Russian column was isolated west of the Goldbach and fought valiantly for several hours before being killed or taken captive.
By 3 o’clock, it finally dawned on Buxhöwden that the battle was being lost, and he made an effort to withdraw to the south with the reserves that he had stubbornly held back from the fray. The French infantry streamed down from the Pratzen Heights and cut down much of the column. Further to the west, Kienmayer and Dokhturov’s men were funneled into a narrow causeway between the Satchan and Mönitz ponds.
According to Napoleon’s official bulletin, some 2,000 Russians drowned in the frozen waters when the ice broke as they were trying to flee. However, after the ponds were drained, only two or three human corpses were found alongside those of over 100 horses, indicating that nearly all of the men who fell into the ice managed to clamber out. The ponds actually seemed to impede the French pursuit, allowing the bulk of the Allied troops to get away. While Davout’s men were too exhausted, Napoleon ordered fresher troops to continue the pursuit late into the night.
The Eagle Flies High
The battle proved a bloody affair. The French suffered some 9,000 killed and wounded, while the corresponding figure for the Allies is estimated at around 15,000. Of the Allied casualties, there was a far higher proportion of Russian dead, indicating the tenacity of the Russian defense. Another 10,000 Allied troops, predominantly Russians, were taken prisoner during the battle.
The Battle of Austerlitz is rightly considered one of Napoleon’s greatest victories on the battlefield. Napoleon’s tactical insight, combined with the skill of his marshals, largely determined the outcome of the battle. By contrast, while there were several talented Allied generals in the coalition army, Kutuzov had been sidelined and was unwilling to disobey his sovereign, Buxhöwden proved a non-entity, and Tsar Alexander lacked any experience for battlefield command. Napoleon was therefore able to maneuver and concentrate his men at key points on the battlefield, while the Allies failed to coordinate their counterattacks and were beaten back one after the other.
Given these circumstances, it was impressive that the Allies still had some 40,000 men by the end of the battle. Although initially isolated in four or five groups, they managed to fall back towards Hungary behind an effective cavalry screen. However, the Third Coalition collapsed in very quick order.
Emperor Francis had already offered an armistice to Napoleon early on December 3, and when Tsar Alexander signaled his desire to take his army back to Russia, the Austrian emperor had no alternative. A Franco-Austrian armistice was in place by December 4, and Tsar Alexander agreed the following day.
On December 26, the Treaty of Pressburg was signed between France and Austria, under which the Austrians were forced to cede their territories in southern Germany and the eastern Adriatic. The victory at Austerlitz was a springboard for the Grande Armée to defeat the Prussians in 1806 and the Russians again in 1807, establishing Napoleon’s dominance of central and western Europe at the Treaty of Tilsit.
Bibliography
Goetz, R. (2017). 1805 Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition. Frontline Books.
