The Battle of Austerlitz was fought on Monday 2 December 1805, near Austerlitz (then in the Austrian Empire, now in the Czech Republic), being the decisive engagement of the War of the Third Coalition. The Grande Armée under the command of Emperor Napoleon I defeated a combined Russo-Austrian army. One force was an imperial Russian army under the command of Tsar Alexander I and General Mikhail Kutuzov, while the other comprised an imperial Austrian army under the command of Emperor Francis II. The battle was known contemporaneously as the Battle of the Three Emperors (after the three monarchs present on the field).
The battle is often cited by military historians as one of Napoleon's tactical masterpieces, in the same league as other historic engagements like Hannibal's Cannae (216 BC) or Alexander the Great's Gaugamela (331 BC). The military victory of Napoleon's at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to an end, with the Peace of Pressburg signed by the French and Austrians later in the month. These achievements did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose armies protected Sicily from a French invasion, to settle.
After eliminating an Austrian army during the Ulm campaign, French forces seized Vienna in November 1805. The Austrians avoided further conflict until the arrival of the Russians, who helped increase the allied numbers. Napoleon sent his army north in pursuit of the Allies, but then ordered his forces to retreat so he could feign a grave weakness to lure the Allies into thinking that they were facing a weak army, while it was in fact formidable. Napoleon gave every indication in the days preceding the engagement that the French army was in a pitiful state, even abandoning the dominant Pratzen Heights near Austerlitz. He deployed the French army below the Pratzen Heights and weakened his right flank, enticing the Allies to launch an assault there to roll up the French line. The French Emperor meanwhile hid the main army in dead ground (ground obscured from a particular vantage point). Napoleon's plan was based on the hope that Marshal Davout and his III Corps would arrive soon on their way from Vienna. A forced march by Davout plugged the gap left by Napoleon just in time. Davout's men stubbornly held their defensive positions under the onslaught of superior opponents. These positions represented both a natural and a fortified-structural barrier. The Allied deployment against the French right weakened the Allied centre on the Pratzen Heights, which was attacked by the IV Corps of Marshal Soult. Napoleon also exploited the weather: noticing the weakened Allied centre, he sent this corps just as the early morning mistwhich contributed to the concealment of both Soult's corps and the Allied centrewas clearing. The mist at that moment had not cleared low enough to uncover Soult's advance. With the centre demolished, the French swept through both flanks and routed the Allies, which enabled the French to capture thousands of prisoners.
Remarkably, the of Russian military commanders nurtured by the great general Alexander Suvorov (17301800)including Mikhail Kutuzov, Pyotr Bagration, Mikhail Miloradovich, Nikolay Kamensky, Sergei Kamensky, Peter Wittgenstein and Friedrich (Fyodor) von Buxhoevedenwas decisively defeated at Austerlitz. The blame for the Allied disaster initially lies with the supreme commander Emperor Alexander I of Russia, who, together with his Austrian chief of staff Franz von Weyrother, fell into Napoleon's "trap" at Austerlitz by accepting an encounter on a battlefield chosen by the French Emperor, then being encircled in the direction of the left Allied flank. The Allied disaster significantly shook the will of Emperor Francis to further resist Napoleon. France and Austria agreed to an armistice immediately, and the Treaty of Pressburg followed shortly after, on 26 December. Pressburg took Austria out of both the war and the Coalition while reinforcing the earlier treaties of Campo Formio and of Lunéville between the two powers. The treaty confirmed the Austrian loss of lands in Italy and Bavaria to France, and in Germany to Napoleon's German allies. It also imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs, equivalent to in , on the Habsburgs and allowed the fleeing Russian troops free passage through hostile territories and back to their home soil. Critically, victory at Austerlitz permitted the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and the eastern powers, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The Confederation rendered the Holy Roman Empire virtually useless, so Francis dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, but remained as emperor of Austria. Prussian worries about the growing French influence in Central Europe led to the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.
Background
Europe had been in turmoil since the start of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792. In 1797, after five years of war, the French Republic broke up the First Coalition, an alliance of Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, and various Italian states. A Second Coalition, led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal and the Kingdom of Naples, was formed in 1798, but by 1801, this too had been defeated, leaving the British the only opponent of the new French Consulate. In March 1802, France and Britain agreed to end hostilities under the Treaty of Amiens.
However, many problems persisted between the two sides, and implementing the treaty became increasingly difficult. The British government resented having to return captured colonies to France and the Batavian Republic under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens. Napoleon was angry that the British refused to abandon the island of Malta. The tense situation only worsened when Napoleon sent an expeditionary force to restore French authority in the colony of Saint-Domingue. In May 1803, Britain declared war on France.
Third Coalition
In December 1804, an Anglo-Swedish agreement led to the creation of the Third Coalition. British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger spent 1804 and 1805 in a flurry of diplomatic activity geared towards forming a new coalition against France, and by April 1805, Britain and Russia had signed an alliance. Having been defeated twice in recent memory by France and being keen on revenge, Austria joined the Coalition a few months later.
Forces
French Imperial army
Before the formation of the Third Coalition, Napoleon had assembled an invasion force called the Armée d'Angleterre (Army of England) around six camps at Boulogne in Northern France. He intended to use this force, amounting to 150,000 men, for his planned invasion of Britain; Napoleon was so confident of success that he had commemorative medals struck to celebrate the "conquest" of Britain. Although they never invaded, Napoleon's troops received careful and invaluable training for any possible military operation. Boredom among the troops occasionally set in, but Napoleon paid many visits and conducted lavish parades to boost morale.
The men at Boulogne formed the core of what Napoleon would later call (The Grand Army). The army was organized into seven corps, which were large field units that contained 36 to 40 cannons each and were capable of independent action until other corps could come to their aid. A single corps (adequately situated in a solid defensive position) could survive at least a day without support. In addition to these forces, Napoleon created a cavalry reserve of 22,000 organized into two cuirassier divisions, four mounted dragoon divisions, one division of dismounted dragoons and one of light cavalry, all supported by 24 artillery pieces. By 1805, the had grown to a force of 350,000 men, who were well equipped, well trained, and led by competent officers.
Russian Imperial army The Russian army in 1805 had many characteristics of Ancien Régime organization. There was no permanent formation above the regimental level, senior officers mostly belonged to aristocratic circles, and lower-ranking officers were often undertrained. A Russian soldier was considered steadfast though, backed by fine artillery crewed by tough gunners. From Peter the Great until the war with Napoleonic France in 1805, Russia almost always achieved success in military affairs. During the Italian and Swiss expedition of 1799 the Russians drove the French out of Italy, but they failed in Switzerland.
Austrian Imperial army Archduke Charles, brother of the Austrian Emperor, had started to reform the Austrian army in 1801 by taking away power from the , the military-political council responsible for the armed forces. Charles was Austria's most able field commander, but he was unpopular at court and lost much influence when, against his advice, Austria decided to go to war with France. Karl Mack became the new main commander in Austria's army, instituting reforms on the eve of the war that called for a regiment to be composed of four battalions of four companies, rather than three battalions of six companies. The multinationality and -lingualism was a standard Austrian problem. The fighting qualities of the Austrian cavalry were high in 1805, but they were often outnumbered by French horsemen due to Napoleon's new cavalry tactics "en masse". The artillery of 1805 was the best among the entire continental Coalition, but no better than the French.
Preliminary moves
In August 1805, Napoleon, Emperor of the French since December of the previous year, turned his sights from the English Channel to the Rhine to deal with the new Austrian and Russian threats. On 25 September after a feverish march in great secrecy, 200,000 French troops began to cross the Rhine on a front of . Mack had gathered the greater part of the Austrian army at the fortress of Ulm in Swabia.
Napoleon swung his forces southward in a wheeling movement that put the French at the Austrian rear while launching cavalry attacks through the Black Forest, which kept the Austrians at bay. The Ulm Maneuver was well-executed, and on 20 October, 23,000 Austrian troops surrendered at Ulm, bringing the number of Austrian prisoners of the campaign to 60,000. Although this spectacular victory was soured by the defeat of a Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar the following day, French success on land continued as Vienna fell in November. The French gained 100,000 muskets, 500 cannons, and intact bridges across the Danube.
Delays prevented the Russians from saving the Austrian armies; they withdrew to the northeast to await reinforcements and link up with surviving Austrian units. Tsar Alexander I appointed General Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov commander-in-chief of the combined Russo-Austrian force. On 9 September 1805, Kutuzov arrived at the battlefield, quickly contacting Francis I of Austria and his courtiers to discuss strategy and logistics. Under pressure from Kutuzov, the Austrians agreed to supply munitions and weapons promptly. Kutuzov also spotted shortcomings in the Austrian defense plan, which he called "very dogmatic". He objected to the Austrian annexation of the land recently under Napoleon's control because this would make the local people distrust the allied force.
The French followed after Kutuzov but soon found themselves in a difficult position. Prussian intentions were unknown and could be hostile; the Russian and Austrian armies had converged, and French lines of communication were extremely long, requiring strong garrisons to keep them open. Napoleon realized that to capitalize on the success at Ulm, he had to force the Allies to battle and then defeat them.